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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23321482">Bring Down the House</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle'>ArgentNoelle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: White Knight (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(only a little bit), Alice in Wonderland References, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Noir, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Character Study, Deconstruction, F/M, Film Noir, Fix-It, Gen, Identity Issues, Joker (DCU) Angst, Joker (DCU) Backstory, Joker (DCU) Has Issues, M/M, Magical Realism, POV Joker (DCU), Past Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel, Prequel, Songfic, Unhealthy Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 16:00:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>53,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23321482</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Joker is the greatest performance of Jack’s life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Batman &amp; Robin - Relationship, Joker &amp; Harley, Joker &amp; Mad Hatter, Joker &amp; Nightwing, Joker &amp; Scarecrow, Joker (DCU) &amp; Lex Luthor, Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne, Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel, Joker (DCU)/Lex Luthor, Joker/Marian Drews</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>159</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story is based on the "Batman: White Knight" storyline (with select bits of the sequel, "Curse of the White Knight" thrown in) with a few crucial differences.</p><p>If you want to know what those differences will be, on a basic premise-level, and WHY I decided to write this particular fic, check the note at the end of this chapter.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What are you doing?”</p><p>“What does it <em>look</em> like I’m doing, Harley?” Joker growled. “I’m killing Robin.”</p><p>He didn’t know why she was so upset. They’d killed people before. Granted—not as many as the public believed. And never like this. Never in the cold, dank underground below the kitchen steps, where the bare bulb creaked overhead. Never Robin. But what could he say? The kid had literally stumbled into his lap. He’d taunted him, at first. Tried to think of what to do with the brat, to stick it to Batman. What would make the funniest joke.</p><p>But somehow, every death-trap, every pun, circled sourly in the pit in his stomach. He’d tied him up down here just to keep him still until… until… he didn’t know what. But the more he talked, the angrier he got. At first the Robin had taunted him, and then begged, and then became stubbornly silent.</p><p>None of it was funny.</p><p><em>I know</em>, Joker thought. <em>I want to find out Batman’s secret identity. That’ll do</em>.</p><p>Surely, Batman being betrayed by his very own <em>kid</em> would be a <em>killer</em>.</p><p>Too bad there was junk in the basement. A few crumbled down bricks that did better striking it in the arms, and then a rusty old pipe that looked <em>just peachy</em> when it swung down, casting up sprays of blood. Joker began to giggle. Everything seemed just right, as long as he could keep moving, <em>stop thinking</em>, stop hearing that whiny kid’s voice telling him that he trusted Batman, that Batman would come save him, that Batman <em>loved</em> him.</p><p>
  <em>Loved him?</em>
</p><p>But the pipe broke, and so he kicked it into the wall. There was silence, for a long moment; Joker staring straight ahead, fists clenched, mouth turned down, and the kid staring back at him behind his mask. It just. It just <em>wasn’t funny</em>.</p><p>So he felt around in his pockets and took out a switchblade. Maybe, just maybe, if he could get a spark of <em>real terror</em>, it would be enough to… keep this from spiraling out of control. Make something make <em>sense</em> again.</p><p>He didn’t actually mean to kill him.</p><p>He didn’t <em>think</em> he meant to kill him.</p><p>But Harley seemed to think he did, and Harley knew him better than anybody (except Batman), didn’t she?</p><p>“Killing a kid? Torturing him like this… oh my god… what were you thinking. What were you <em>thinking</em>?”</p><p>“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Joker said, doubtfully. She had him up against the wall. Had grabbed the switchblade from his hand, pushed him back so hard it sent a slam of pain through his back up to his shoulderblades.</p><p>“Yeah? You weren’t going to kill him?” Harley shouted. “That’s not what you said a minute ago.”</p><p>“Well, I…” Joker hedged.</p><p>“Why? Why’d you do it? Why’d you hurt him?”</p><p>“I just wanted to know Batman’s secret identity,” Joker mumbled, into his shirt. That was <em>reasonable</em>, wasn’t it? He knew how to be reasonable. He was good at that.</p><p>“Oh yeah? Oh, oh of course. Batman. It’s always been Batman with you, huh? But I don’t think you wanted to know what’s under the mask, heck no; you coulda just taken off the kid’s mask and done the math. It’s something else isn’t it,” Harley said. “Answer me!”</p><p>Joker’s eyes slip-slid around the dingy basement, his gaze getting caught on Harley’s shadow spinning around the wall. She didn’t usually yell at him like this. Actually… she <em>never</em> yelled at him like this. Not like <em>this</em>.</p><p>The sinking feeling got bigger. The adrenaline surge pulling back like a fist, leaving him shaking.</p><p>“Jack!” she said, eyes narrowed.</p><p>He blinked at her once, resentfully. “There’s no need to bring <em>him</em> into this, my dear.”</p><p>She actually slapped him then. Keeping the switchblade in her other hand.</p><p>“Damn you, Joker, you didn’t want to know his identity. <em>Tell me what you want</em>.”</p><p>“I just…”</p><p>“You were jealous of him, weren’t you?” Harley spat. “Oh yeah, <em>no one</em> can be closer to the Bat than you are, right? Come on, tell me I’m right!”</p><p>“So what if you are?” Joker hissed. “We had a deal, Bats and I. An understanding. And now he wants to bring in outsiders…” he brought his hands up, slowly, to Harley’s wrists, slowly pushed her off him, talking all the while. “This Robin. What does he have that I don’t? Is it the shorts?”</p><p>Harley stepped back, chest heaving; he could see the tears glittering in her eyes, which were wide and dark. “I don’t know you anymore,” she said. She stepped back again, and again, holding the bloody blade in front of her like she was warding him off with it. She stepped backward up the stairs, staring him down all the while.</p><p>And then she was gone.</p><p>Joker looked around. “That’s it?” He laughed a little, clutching his stomach. “Ha-ha-HAHAHA—heh. Oh kid, that’s a good one, ain’t it. She didn’t even bother to free you.”</p><p>He sat down, unable to keep on his feet any longer, wiping his eyes, which had begun to tear from laughter. “Ahh. Where were we? I think you were about to tell me something…”</p><p>The kid stared back, looking lost. Some weight seemed to have settled on his shoulders, the world seemed to drift in soft-focus. Then Robin blinked, and a tear slid down his cheek. He cried, and Joker laughed; wishing that he couldn’t feel the tears on his own skin.</p><p>What a joke!</p><p>“I wish…” Robin croaked, at last.</p><p>“That you were rescued?” Joker said. “Join the club! I wish that every day but it doesn’t change a <em>thing</em> does it?”</p><p>“I wish…” Robin repeated, his mouth a flat line.</p><p>Joker stopped laughing, and murmured, “that I would go to hell? I’d wish that if I were you.”</p><p>“I wish that I’d never met <em>Bruce Wayne</em>,” Robin said.</p><p>Joker’s mouth parted. “Huh?” He got up, sidling back toward the kid, who flinched as he came near. “I’m sorry, did you say Bruce Wayne? Batman is <em>Bruce Wayne</em>? That’s … actually that makes sense. Okay.”</p><p>“So kill me, then,” the kid spat. “Get it over with.”</p><p>The kid. What was his name? That little thing that Brucie had adopted recently. A-ha. “Jason Todd. That’s you, isn’t it.”</p><p>No answer, but Joker knew he was right.</p><p>“Ah… ahh. Well. I have what I want. Why should I kill you? No, I’m letting you go. Crawl back to daddy, why should I care?” He untied the ropes with a vicious jerk.</p><p>Suddenly Jason laughed harshly, almost choking on it. “Go back?” he said, wildly. “After I gave him up like this, betrayed him to you? How can I? He’d never trust me again.”</p><p>“I do see how that would be a problem,” Joker said, holding the coils of rope in his hand. “Listen… kid… why don’t you solve both our problems, and… just leave.”</p><p>Robin stood up, and stumbled; Joker caught his arm and had to duck from a swinging punch. “Hey now, I’m not trying to hurt you <em>anymore</em>.”</p><p>“What do you mean, just leave,” Jason said, thickly.</p><p>They staggered up the creaking staircase like two drunks, clutching at each other for balance.</p><p>“Just leave! Start a new life. It wouldn’t be hard. Here, I’ll even give you money.” Joker pulled a briefcase from the corner, threw in a bunch of his own clothes and three rolls of cash. “And I’ll never bother you again. It’ll be like you’re dead.”</p><p>Jason stared down at the briefcase, holding onto the lip of the door for support. His eyes were wide, and scared.</p><p>“It’s not like you have anything to lose,” Joker wheedled.</p><p>Jason grabbed the briefcase.</p><p>“If I see you again, clown…” he said. “I’ll kill you.”</p><p>“I’ll look forward to it!” Joker said, with a bright smile. He handed Jason his coat.</p><p>Jason stared at it for a long moment, the thick purple weight of it, then off into the dark emptiness of Gotham’s streets. He looked back down at his blood-splattered costume and the bruises blossoming across his arms and legs, and took the coat, wrapping it around himself.</p><p>He left without looking back.</p><p>Joker sagged. He went into the bathroom, got a bucket and a mop; cleaned up the bloodstains on the steps in a daze, plunging the mop into the soapy water as though he were punching Batman on his pointy-eared head, following the trail back down the stairs, into the basement.</p><p><em>How did it get this real?</em> He thought, staring at the blood as he plunged the mop down and watched the bubbles pop and disappear, spiraling the water across the dirty floor.</p><p><em>It was supposed to be a game</em>, he thought.</p><p><em>I’m not</em> The Joker, he thought. <em>That’s just a publicity stunt.</em></p><p>He wrung out the mop, mechanically.</p><p><em>I wouldn’t really torture and kill a kid, would I?</em> he thought.</p><p>He started laughing, grabbing onto the mop until it fell, until he tripped over the bucket and sent its contents flying out across the floor. And that’s where he lay, with soapy, pink water soaking into the back of his shirt and trousers, staring at the bare bulb. <em>I’m Jack Napier,</em> he though. <em>Just a kid from the country who they told to play a Supervillain</em>.</p><p>
  <em>But I did a good job, didn’t I?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No one could have done a better one!</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I decided to switch things around, so everyone thinks "Joker" and "Jack" are two separate identities, but they're not.<br/>They're just one guy, with a bunch of master plans and a real issue with getting in over his head.</p><p>////////////////////////////</p><p>1. This story is going to end up diverging wildly, plot-wise, from the comic.</p><p>2. The characterization is very different from the comic.</p><p>I wanted to move from the premise that everything Joker said in White Knight was true, about how he'd been an ordinary low-level criminal bullied into creating the persona of the Joker as part of a huge scheme by the people who run Arkham, who profit off of the destruction Batman causes.</p><p>In some ways this is a fix-it, for characterization issues I thought were glaring [and scenes I thought were annoying, uncomfortable, or just plain horrifying]. But it doesn't focus on other POVs besides Joker, so, though I've tried to make the plot clear, even where I've lifted directly from the comic, it might make more sense if you've read that first.</p><p>Also, because of these things — because this is an AU of what was already a pretty wild Batman AU, the characterization of Joker, Batman, Robin, Harley(s)... and the relationships between them, are going to be very different from how I normally see them as characters and how I would normally write their relationships.</p><p>3. As always, I take inspiration from a bunch of other canon, comic and animated, along the way.</p><p>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Rant (If you don't want to read a rant about the original comic and Joker characterization, feel free to skip this part)</p><p>So why did I write this?</p><p>My motivation is simple, and I feel I should come clean about it: I wasn't a huge fan of the original comic, though I did love some bits of it: the general noir vibe, the artwork, even quite a few scenes and character beats. [oh and Batgirl. She's literally the best part of the original comic, but unfortunately isn't in this fic]</p><p>What I didn't like was [a lot, but I won't get into it here] some of the implications stemming directly from the fact that the creator of the comic chose to have "Joker" (Joker) and "Jack" (sane Joker) be two different identities, Two-Face style. Normal ordinary Jack has an actually pretty lovely romance with Harley, &amp; Joker loves Batman; but after Joker becomes sane and calls himself Jack, the comic waffles around about whether he actually *did* love Batman. Ultimately, in the sequel comic, it becomes clear that "Joker" as written is capable of nothing more than obsession, that he's a horrible person with 0 redeeming qualities, etc, while normal heterosexual "Jack" is a hero. Others have written much more about this unfortunate implication in meta which I'm sure you can find.</p><p>4. Another note. My Joker is *not* going to be any more abusive to Harley than you might see in an episode of BTAS. Considering the specific storyline changes I made, probably less. The portrayal of... whatever that was supposed to be... in "Curse of the White Knight" literally disgusted me so much, I can't even. I know this is a thing in recent comics, to make Joker be the literal Evilest Evil who ever Stereotypically Eviled, who Only Ever Does Anything Because of Batman.</p><p>(I admit I was really surprised at the portrayal of the death of Jason in the original comic when I read it, where it was depicted as a crime of passion where he was mad at JASON for messing up his plan and NOT a premeditated attack, considering how that incident has been re-interpreted in adaptation — in the animated movie, or especially the Arkham games, for example, where Joker literally keeps torturing Jason for years on end because he wanted to hurt Batman. ALL to add to Batman's bat-pain.)</p><p>It kind of annoys me.</p><p>/Rant over.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jack was nervous. He couldn't help fidgeting his wrists inside the handcuffs, even though the lawyer had told him not to, that it made him look guilty and afraid. Well, he <em>was</em> guilty and afraid. So he'd screwed up. Big time. He wasn't sure what had made the idea of robbing a bank look so good, because now on the other side of it he looked like a <em>sucker</em>.</p><p>"Come on, Jackie boy, It'll be easy money," he muttered. "Yeah. Sure." He knee went up and down, up and down, jiggling madly. He could hardly even make out the faces and sounds of his trial around him; felt as though he was in a daze. He still wanted to stand up, protest that this was all a misunderstanding. <em>I'm just a kid from the country. I didn't know how it is in the city; I don't know Gotham</em>…</p><p>
  <em>So how's it in the country, then? You kids get away with robbing banks there?</em>
</p><p><em>No sir,</em> it's just that it had been so hard. He'd had dreams, big ones. He was going to make it, not come crawling back to the sticks with his tail between his legs. He wasn't going to get a job teaching high school chemistry in his home town and spend the afternoons grading papers, staring out at the endless prairie waiting for the circus to arrive, while the breeze didn't even shake the still, hot air. So he'd left. Thought, <em>I'm gonna be a comedian. It's not hard. Everyone says I could be one</em>.</p><p>Turned out that what they thought was funny in the country didn't even make these city folks blink an eye. He got half-hearted applause half the time, and silence the rest.</p><p>He'd been getting desperate.</p><p>And then Joe, who always watched the show with his hat pulled down low and his arms stuck into the pockets of his big coat, smoking up a storm, had pulled him aside. "Hey kid," he said. "I'm running a job, and I need a few extra hands."</p><p>Uh-oh, Jack's head said. <em>This man here is</em> bad news. <em>Back away slowly</em>. Problem was, his stomach was too hungry to listen.</p><p>"Yeah?" he said, hesitantly. "Wha…" his mouth went dry. "What kinda job."</p><p>That's the thing; <em>everyone</em> knew Joe was a criminal. One of the old-time crowd. Probably in the mob. And what did he need a shaking kid like Jack for, right, if not to take the fall?</p><p>"You've got guts," Joe said, his dark eyes glittering. He slapped Jack on the back, hard. "That's what I like ta see. Guts, an' a good work ethic. You slave away here all night, what do they give you? Pittance. Y'know where they keep the real money, Jackie-boy?"</p><p>"In the. Um." Jack followed the man out into the back alley, flinching aside from the sudden yowl of a cat that streaked by, started. He almost crashed into a trashcan, and felt Joe's hand steady him. "Banks?"</p><p>"Got it in one."</p><p>Joe told Jack about the good deal he could get while he pulled out another cigarette and lit it from the end of his, passing it over. Jack took it, with a shaking hand, while he laughed nervously, a habit he'd never been able to break himself of. He'd never been a <em>rebel</em>. The closest he'd ever gotten was that time in high school when he decided <em>screw it</em> and sneaked into his mother's room one afternoon. He knew she wouldn't see him; she was passed out on the couch, so he took his time pillaging her makeup drawer. The next day, at school, he'd been ready, with lipstick that was hardly wobbly and mascara on his lashes.</p><p>He'd always sat behind Tom in class. Tom was athletic, and brooding; he had a sort of far-away stare. Maybe he was thinking deep thoughts; maybe he didn't have a brain to speak of. It was a mystery he'd never quite solved.</p><p>Tom didn't notice him at all.</p><p>That day, though: that day was different. Jack went up to him in the hall, feeling emboldened, wildly determined, because he knew this was the only chance he'd get to make Tom <em>remember</em> him. It only took a few flirtatious words and Tom had turned on him, punching his head against the metal so hard he chipped a tooth; when the fight was finally broke up Jack was laughing, exhilarated; Tom shouting: "did you hear what that — said? Did you hear that — —?" as he was pulled away.</p><p>Jack was in the clouds.</p><p>He was still dancing on air when he was taken to the nurse's office and made to wash off the makeup under her disapproving eye.</p><p>The walk home that afternoon was like a breeze—he couldn't stop thinking of Tom's anger, the unhinged look in his eye, couldn't stop feeling the sting of bruises on his face and dancing, skipping out of the sheer <em>joy</em> of it.</p><p>When he got home, though, there was mother in the doorway, staring him down.</p><p>"I got a call from school," she said.</p><p>Jack stopped short.</p><p>"Y-you did?" he said.</p><p>"Of <em>course</em> I did," his mother said, with a sneer. "Do you think they wouldn't tell me, if my son was acting like a—" she kept yelling at him, but he covered his ears with his hands so he couldn't hear her; tears were dripping down his face and off his nose in big, fat, <em>plops</em>. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked his hands down. "Don't you ignore me when I'm talking to you!"</p><p>"Sorry," Jack said. He put his hands by his sides, pressing his fingernails into his palms until they hurt.</p><p>"You wanna make me look like a fool?" his mother continued. "You think you'll ever get into college like this?"</p><p>"I don't wanna go to college," Jack said, sticking out his jaw. "I want to go to Gotham and be a comedian."</p><p>"Oh, you wanna be a <em>comedian</em>," his mother said.</p><p>Jack nodded stiffly.</p><p>"Well, I'll be around when you get your ass kicked back here," she said. "Don't say your folks never did anything for you."</p>
<hr/><p>So Joe'd invited him along to meet his <em>friends</em>. A bunch of hulking men with noses that looked like they'd been broken, dark fedoras, and the haze of cigarette smoke clinging to them like Gotham muck to a floater. They made plans in sharp, monotone voices, while Jack paced around till one of them would snap at him to sit down and be quiet.</p><p>But he'd never been <em>good</em> at that. If Jack wasn't running his mouth he was just plain running.</p><p>"You're sure this plan'll work?" he asked.</p><p>They turned to look at him as one, glares boring down on him. Jack laughed, caught himself by biting his cheek and tried to calm down. "Uh," he said. "It's just. Wouldn't it work better if you used that exit… put another man over there…" he leaned forward, pointing at their map, and saw a few eyebrows go up. Suddenly they were looking at him assessingly.</p><p>"Huh," one of them said. "This kid might be a good deal after all."</p>
<hr/><p>"Your story's tragic, that's good," his lawyer had told him. "Misguided youth is a good way to spin it. You were broke, and hungry; your real aims were just to make people laugh. And you got pulled into a heist. Happens all the time in Gotham."</p><p>"So you can get me off?" Jack asked hopefully.</p><p>"I don't know about that," his lawyer said. "A reduced sentence, sure. If you plead guilty. First offense and all."</p><p>It wasn't his first offense, but Jack wasn't about to tell his lawyer that. He had a feeling the man suspected, though. Something about the way he'd talked to him, asked him about the gang.</p><p>"I don't know nothing about them," Jack'd said. "They just needed another man for this job, and I…" he let his voice wobble, tears spring to his eyes, held out his hands in supplication. "I know it was wrong, but I didn't know what else to do."</p><p>He'd still made his rounds at the clubs, telling jokes to an unimpressed populace, partially because he thought he might somehow gain an audience, partially because he'd started thinking about what to do if a job ever <em>did</em> go bad; thinking he could spin it that he didn't know these guys half as well as he actually did: <em>I've just been telling jokes the whole time, see? </em>He'd been with the gang for a year and a half by that point, and he'd had <em>hopes</em> that if his comedian gig didn't go anywhere, he might be able to make a career out of being a professional safe-cracker.</p><p>'Course, that was before the Bat appeared, and ruined everyone's chances.</p>
<hr/><p>His lawyer turned out to be a joke, but what d'you expect with the city-provided version? Jack couldn't pay for a better one. He <em>should</em> have been able to; if he'd saved up his money, like he'd told himself was smart, instead of spending it after each heist, on fine clothes and jewelry, and paintings and cars and glass cases to display the jewelry properly, rounds of drinks for his friends and packs of cigarettes, and paying all the medical school bills of blondes he met in bars. So really it was his own damn fault that he got ten years instead of the two he could've probably gotten if he'd played it properly.</p><p>And he'd heard of men finding God in prison, but the only thing he found was that he'd <em>kill</em> to have a good night's sleep.</p>
<hr/><p>Outside the club where the audience still hadn't laughed, leaning against the grimy concrete, Jack held his gun to his chin and looked up at the pall of smoke where the night sky should have been—it still unsettled him to see that eerie emptiness, bright and dark, like the city itself had wiped away the endless river of stars. He'd never been to prison yet. He had more money than he knew what to do with. There was no reason to feel like killing himself, and he felt like a coward for even considering it.</p><p>He put his finger on the trigger. Took it off. Put it on again.</p><p>The door opened, a spill of bright light and noise; and he didn't have the presence of mind to hide his gun fast enough. It was a group of girls from the drag show; the one in front met his eyes and something on his insides hollowed out, like his cowardice was plain to see. Like everyone <em>knew</em>.</p><p>Somehow the chattering group had thinned, the others fading away at a glance, the one that had met his eyes stepping out into the alley. "Have a light?" she asked, holding a cigarette toward him.</p><p>Jack lowered the gun, shoving it back into his holster thoughtlessly, the line hidden under his dark suit, and poked around until he found one. He lit it, and watched the girl's precise fingers hovering close to the flame; another click, and the flame was out, only a glow on the end of her cigarette. He lit one himself and they smoked in silence for a moment.</p><p>"Name's Jeannie," the girl said after a moment.</p><p>"Jack," Jack said. He glanced over, shyly. She was good. Too tall, maybe; but a nice blonde wig and makeup that made her look like a movie star, and she moved like one, too. The studiously carefree glamour of an artist.</p><p>"I liked your act," she said.</p><p>Jack laughed shortly. "You don't have to patronize me," he said.</p><p>"I'm not," Jeannie said sharply. She looked at him with a dark, intent focus that made Jack feel bad for ever having considered that she would. "It's got its rough edges but it's funny. Refreshing. You think I haven't seen enough wannabe comedians tryin'a make it big? They're a dime a dozen. And you," she shrugged. "You've got potential. For a two-man act, maybe. I've seen you talking with the patrons, you're funnier when you have something to play off of."</p><p>"…Huh," Jack said. "I'd never considered it." He sucked in smoke, forced himself to look away from her for a moment; he didn't want to seem rude. "Problem is I don't have anyone to play off of. It's make it alone or…"</p><p>"Come on," Jeannie said, with playful skepticism; he glanced over and saw her smiling at him with hidden teeth. "No one makes it alone. Even an out-of-towner oughta know that."</p><p>"Yeah? What gave me away?" Jack said.</p><p>"Besides the accent?" Jeannie said. "Everything about you projects 'I'm not from here.' I almost thought you were doing it on purpose. To keep people away. Might be one of the reasons you're not getting picked up."</p><p>"You've been watching me a lot, haven't you?" Jack said. This time he didn't bother trying to look away; staring right into her eyes, Gotham-dark; a sky emptied of stars. She met his gaze.</p><p>"Like I said," Jeannie answered. "I think you're funny."</p><p>Jack raised his cigarette like a toast toward her. "Well, I've got an audience of at least one. Good to know."</p>
<hr/><p>Ever since he was young, the lure of Gotham had tugged at him, tangling in his clothes, his hair. Jack had hazy memories from when he was a kid, listening to his dad talk about Gotham. Grim, glum, gritty—it didn't matter. The picture it painted was of <em>excitement</em>, something almost mythic in proportion.</p><p>"I never was happier than the day I got out of that blasted city for good," his dad would say. But Jack didn't believe him.</p><p>For one thing, his dad <em>wasn't</em> happy now. Surely, in Gotham, some magic worked its way through the air. Something that infused those faded stories with life; that brought that spark of animation into his father's eyes. The way the stories always ended, with the dull thud of finality like a moral, rubbed him the wrong way. It felt fake.</p><p>When he was eight, one winter afternoon when the cold bit like wolves, Jack walked home bundled in his coat and scarf, gloved hands shoved into his pockets, eyes watering in the crisp stillness. He'd failed his chemistry exam because he got into an argument with the teacher and ended up knocking his desk over and shouting. Then spent the rest of his day <em>thinking about the consequences of his actions</em>. It didn't matter that he'd already answered most of the questions, and got them right. It never did.</p><p>He stomped his way inside and was startled by the darkness; the way there were no lights on even though it had gotten dark; slush and mud trailing off his boots as he pulled them off, his socks wet with snow. He walked inside to see his mom sitting at the kitchen table, staring at nothing.</p><p>"Mom?" he said, voice quiet, feeling a hint of unease. "What's wrong?"</p><p>"Don't go into the bathroom upstairs, all right honey?" she said vaguely, not looking his way. "Your father killed himself. They're gonna come for the body."</p>
<hr/><p>There was a man known at that time only as Jonathan Crane, and he'd ended up in the Gotham State Penitentiary for having fired a gun in the middle of his college classroom. ("I wasn't <em>threatening</em> them," he'd explained with a snort. "Just showing what a hearty dose of <em>true terror</em> felt like. But of course those <em>fools</em> couldn't understand my unorthodox methods…")</p><p>He was a short, slight man with a shock of bright orange hair that looked like a good breeze might knock him over, but everyone was terrified of him. He didn't scare easily, but he sure knew how to get at everyone else. Probably came from having been a psychiatrist. "I specialize in fear," he'd told Jack. "I don't just scare people for the <em>fun</em> of it."</p><p>"Do you do <em>anything</em> for the fun of it?" Jack asked.</p><p>Crane stared at him. "No," he said.</p><p>Jack was <em>fairly</em> certain Crane was joking.</p><p>The thing with Jonathan Crane was that he always seemed faintly baffled by Jack. Jack, though, he was no psychiatrist but he could <em>read</em> people. And he could find his way to the top. Through whatever fluke of fate had it out for him, Crane had made it to the top. And so Jack decided to befriend him.</p><p>"You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were insane," Crane said conversationally. "I usually have to tie people down for this."</p><p>"I <em>am</em> tied down," Jack pointed out.</p><p>"Against their will, I mean," Crane said.</p><p>They were in the medical wing because Crane, sneaky bastard that he was, had worked his way up to getting allowed in as an assistant. Jack suspected blackmail. Nothing else would quite explain how they were allowed to have the run of an empty office in the middle of the night, unless he was getting <em>very</em>friendly with one of the wardens.</p><p>And what Crane liked to do in an empty office in the middle of the night was, unfortunately, not Jack's precise definition of <em>fun</em>, but it was the price of being friends with the man.</p><p>Crane squinted at the syringe in his hand. "That should do it," he said. "A dose calculated to last for two hours precisely. Please; feel free to scream."</p><p>"As you wish, doc," Jack said, laughing. "Don't think I could <em>stop</em> myself—" his eyes rolled back.</p><p>"Good," he could hear Crane's voice from a long way off, as he tried to claw free of his restraints. Damn, but this one was something. He actually thought he could see a white, hovering face far off in the dark; its face marred with a jovial glasgow grin.</p><p>"Heya there Jackie boy," the clown said, sitting down across from him.</p><p><em>This is stupid</em>, Jack thought. I mean, what kind of grown man was still afraid of clowns?</p><p>"We're gonna have some fun tonight, aren't we Jack?" the clown said.</p><p>"No," Jack said, screwing his eyes shut. "You're not real, you're not there, you can't hurt me…"</p><p>"Did I <em>stutter</em>?" the clown growled in his face, spittle flying out to land congealing on Jack's cheek. His eyes flew open as he felt the spit eating into him like acid, like it was burning itself through his flesh, <em>melting him open</em>!</p><p>"We're gonna have some <em>fun</em>, Jack. And you're gonna <em>smile</em>!"</p>
<hr/><p>They never met anywhere else, but somehow that felt only right; a succession of nightclubs, the strain of music as the bands played. During the space between their acts (Jeannie's, successful, Jack's a dismal failure) they would sit moments in the back room, talking about hopes and dreams, cleared of identifying information. He didn't know why Jeannie wanted to be his friend, and he didn't care. His nights, even the hollow ache of a dead audience, were better with her, knowing she was there, watching, smiling. Jeannie had her group of friends; sharp-eyed, quick-witted, laughing. Even the dirty underbelly of Gotham became something worthwhile with them, if only for a moment.</p><p>And each day his hands got steadier around a gun, and on lock-picks; bending his head to hear the cylinders <em>click</em>. The haze of smoke had long-stopped making him cough and choke, and he could barely remember the smell of open fields.</p><p>Men with dead eyes like polished bone. It no longer scared him at all.</p><p>"Nice heels. Are they new?"</p><p>"You noticed?" Jeannie smiled, delighted. Then her gaze became more thoughtful, as though she'd noticed something in his look. "Want to try them on?" she asked, kicking them off in one smooth motion.</p><p>He was aware, suddenly, of the few people walking by from backstage, though no one paid them any mind; a few of Jeannie's friends looking inquisitive. He backed up, angry, feeling cornered though the dark hanging curtains were rows barely visible from the small hall with its open bulbs. "What kinda man do you take me for?" he growled, and stalked away with stung pride; he felt betrayed. Like something in his heart <em>hurt</em>. He'd almost—<em>almost</em>—thought Jeannie was perfect. That nothing she could do would ever make him feel bad.</p><p>Neither of them brought it up again, and he tried to pretend nothing had changed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We need a man to join the group. Just a little intimidation… some people not paying their cut." Joe's words were jocular, as though this were a little secret; something funny. But there was steel behind it. "Hey, Jackie-boy." A rough thumb was jerked in his direction. "I know it's not your usual gig, but you can stand there and look intimidating, can't you?"</p><p>"Uh… yeah Boss," Jack said. There was a chorus of laughs at his obvious nerves, and someone handed him a machine gun.</p><p>The drive downtown felt almost like a vacation; Jack couldn't remember the last time he'd been out in the middle of the day. A few of the boys rolled their windows down; and there wasn't a single shoot-out; a few people even waved or called out greetings. It was, Jack thought, almost like being famous. Finally they piled out in front of the <em>Moonlight Café</em> and went inside; cool, casual. Jack stood back and let the others handle it, threats rolling back and forth like pleasantries. Finally, curtains rolling down on the end of the first act, the reason they were there at all. "I think we wanna see your boss. You can manage that, can't you?"</p><p>The waiter scurried off and after some moments the man who owned it all stepped up with a downturned mouth and a worried look in his eyes. He was the one that needed to be <em>persuaded</em>. There was fear there, sure, but he didn't let it stop him; walking with a confident assurance that Jack almost admired. Dark eyes latched onto the man in charge, he spoke with the slightest hint of distaste. "Hello, gentlemen."</p><p>There was silence.</p><p>"I think you know why we're here," someone said, but the details had begun to spin by, faster and faster. Jack would've recognized that voice anywhere, even flat and unadorned by any false lilt. He stared and felt the floor shuddering beneath him. He didn't know he'd spoken, didn't recognize that the word had even left his mouth. "Jeannie?"</p><p>Nobody else seemed to have heard the whisper. But there: that face pausing on his own for the slightest moment, picking him out of the group. The eyes, widening, with something like sadness and horror mixed—but then the glance was gone, as though it had never been.</p><p>He knew it had, though, because that night the bouncers wouldn't let him in to any of the nightclubs he tried. He knew where Jeannie was tonight, and begged at the door, not caring it made him look like a desperate fool. "I just want to explain. Please… I just want to apologize."</p><p>"No one wants to hear it, kid. Scram."</p><p>He would've waited all night, but he knew she'd have her ways to avoid him.</p><p>And the next day it was done: the <em>Moonlight Café</em> was torched.</p><p>He never heard from Jeannie again.</p><hr/><p>"I wouldn't offer this to anyone else," Crane said, "but you've been nothing but helpful to me, against all the odds." He frowned in Jack's direction.</p><p>"Jack. <em>Jack</em>, are you listening to me?"</p><p>They were in their cell. They hadn't used to share a cell, but the prison soon found it made better sense to put them together, since Crane tended to drive people into screaming fits, and everyone they put Jack with usually ended up having… <em>accidents</em>.</p><p>Only thing wrong with living with Crane, which is what Jack had wanted when he maimed all those guys, was that while he kinda, sorta, actually trusted the man (perhaps it was fate. After all, they were <em>both</em> out-of-towners. They knew the country, even though the city had already started swallowing them up)— Crane saw living together as free reign to dose him with whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, with no warning.</p><p>And Jack couldn't exactly say <em>no</em>, now could he?</p><p>He thought he probably had a problem with that.</p><p>Saying no.</p><p>Maybe if he'd said no a few more times he wouldn't have been here—ah, yes. Crane.</p><p>"What is it, 'Scarecrow'?" Jack said, giggling. That was a funny name. Scarecrow had broken out recently—God knows how, and when he came back he'd been all, I have a <em>name</em> now. I'm a <em>Supervillain</em>.</p><p>Crane sighed. "Can you never take anything seriously?"</p><p>"Can you never lighten up?" Jack mocked. "I think whatever you dosed me with last time was a little… funny. It hasn't really worn off."</p><p>Crane frowned. He leaned forward, pulling down Jack's eyelids to look in his eyes, getting him to stick out his tongue. "It shouldn't still be affecting you," he said.</p><p>"Oh, ahh, haha, that's nice to know," Jack said. "But that clown threatening to cut my face open doesn't seem to have gotten the message."</p><p>Crane sat there for a moment, stumped. "Well. I'm sure I can think of an antidote," he said at last, pragmatically. "Just give me a moment." He went to the cell door, and pulled out a ring of keys. Jack eyed him.</p><p>"Well?" Crane said. "Coming?"</p><p>"Sure, don't get your burlap sack in a twist," Jack said, giggling again. "Did I mention it looked pretty stupid?"</p><p>"Only ten million times, thank you. It's a work in progress," Crane said stiffly. Jack followed him out of the cell.</p><p>"It's actually what I meant to talk with you about," Crane said, as they got settled into medical wing. Crane rustled through the empty offices, putting things together in the setup on the side. Jack had become increasingly convinced that the office was, actually, Crane's; and that for whatever reason, the prison was giving him a fully-stocked laboratory along with it. Jack sat on the edge of the patient's chair, and swung his legs. "I've been offered a deal by some highly-placed people involved in running this place."</p><p>"Yeah, what else is new?" Jack muttered.</p><p>Crane cast him an annoyed glance. "This is something different. And I've convinced them that you might be interested. At any rate they're willing to give you a chance."</p><p>His mixed a few things in one of his beakers. "Let's see how this works. Any better?" He positioned the syringe; pressed down.</p><p>Jack blinked, watching at the liquid disappearing into his veins. He looked around. "Uh… maybe? Yeah? Yeah." The clown had disappeared; the sensation of being <em>watched</em> took longer to fade.</p><p>He rubbed his forehead. "I don't think this place is doing me good," he confessed, to Crane's turned back. The professor didn't listen. Hell, for all Jack knew he could <em>still</em> be part of an experiment. Maybe Crane had given him something slow-acting and wanted to see how long it took till Jack cracked and asked him to fix it. It sounded like something Crane would do.</p><p>"So escape."</p><p>"A-ha, easier said than done," Jack said. He glanced at Crane, who had turned back around and was giving him a slightly superior smile. "Or… is this that deal you were talking about?"</p><p>"They're calling it the Supervillain Initiative," Crane said. He looked around, lowering his voice as though someone might hear them; and then, for good measure, sat down next to Jack and spoke in a whisper. "The deal is, you break out with their blessing. Cause some property damage in a specific area."</p><p>"Aand… then get re-arrested and serve even more time," Jack said. "I'm not really seeing the sweet end yet, Crane."</p><p>Crane shrugged. "Yes, you run that risk. But you'll do it like me—with virtually no restraints. With all the amenities you could ask for."</p><p>"Like a well-stocked lab, and an office that might as well be yours, even if you don't put your name on it?" Jack said. "Well, I suspect <em>John Tanaacre</em> doesn't mind you using it."</p><p>"He's been very obliging," Crane said, smirking.</p><p>"There's only one problem, Crane," Jack said. "There's nothing they can give me that I want."</p><p>Crane frowned at him. "Everyone wants <em>something</em>, Jack."</p><p>Jack laughed shortly. "Yeah, like they'll let me open my own comedy club? That's the thing, <em>Scarecrow</em>. What I want can't be bought with money."</p><p>"So it's a no?" Crane said.</p><p>"It's a no," Jack said.</p><p>"Pity. You could have been very good."</p><p>Crane let himself out of the office. Maybe to walk back to his cell; maybe to escape; maybe to have a chat with his mysterious benefactors.</p><p>"Well, <em>that's</em> not ominous," Jack said.</p><hr/><p>"What do you see?"</p><p>It was the staple of psychiatrists everywhere, like they'd make a pillow-fort in his head if they could. As long as they could safely pack up and leave by the end of the day.</p><p>Crane was no exception, though his reasoning was simpler than that. He liked to see people afraid. It made his eyes shine with excitement, his pulse quicken. Well, whatever; who was Jack to begrudge him?</p><p><em>Jeannie, as Jack had known her and as he had last seen him at the same time, hung from a rafter. Blood dripping down</em>.</p><p>"A clown…"</p><p>
  <em>The empty cold air with the silence you only ever found in the country, and never realized you had until you lost it —I was never as happy as when I left Gotham (that's a LIE)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His mother's voice</em>
</p><p>"And something with wings…"</p><hr/><p>Of course, that wasn't the end of it.</p><p>Soon, a very nice young lady came to give Jack the full sales pitch. "I hear you've been having reservations about joining our Supervillain Initiative," she said. She was poised, put-together. Short brown hair cut sharp at her neck. It made Jack think of <em>necks</em> and <em>cutting</em>, and that wasn't a good place to go, nope, look around at the table instead, see if you can scratch through it with your nails. It's just that she made him really. Really. Annoyed.</p><p>"No, I said <em>no</em>. Is that so hard to understand?" Jack growled. "Two little letters."</p><p>"This costume, as you see here, creates full impenetrability. It's a face-mask that will protect you from everything including a bullet, as will the rest of the costume."</p><p>"So you're expecting me to get shot at," Jack said sourly. "Great. What a laugh."</p><p>The woman smiled at him, brightly.</p><p>If he was a little less self-controlled, he could probably take that pencil she'd left lying so carelessly at her hand and shove it <em>straight up her eye</em>!</p><p>She frowned at him. "I'm sorry, Mr. Napier. Does something about this seem funny to you?"</p><p>"Funny?" Jack gasped. "Hell <em>yeah</em> I think it's funny. You expect me to run around pretending to rob places wearing a giant red trashcan on my head. What? Should I wave my arms around and shout, 'shoot me' while I'm at it?"</p><p>"I'd heard you could be reasoned with," the woman said, tightly. At least she'd finally dropped the fake happiness. There was nothing Jack hated more than fake emotions. It made him want to rip something real from them. Didn't have to be happiness, either. "What I was <em>going</em> to say is that we understand the concern that you'll have to do more time. But that's why every costume we've created has a mask component."</p><p>"Mm-hm," Jack said. "And the police are going to be <em>so</em> nice and helpful, and just leave it on when I ask them to."</p><p>The woman smiled at him again; just a little. Almost victoriously.</p><p>She knew she had him. "But the <em>police</em> aren't going to be catching you."</p><p>Jack narrowed his eyes.</p><p>"Haven't you ever wanted to meet Batman?"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So Jack became the Red Hood. It was a lousy name, sue him. He didn't make up the rules. Actually, he wasn't the <em>only</em> Red Hood. That was the other reason this whole mask shtick was so useful to the gatekeepers. It allowed them to switch bodies out like they were on an assembly line. If one of their pieces was a little too broken to continue, not to worry! We've got another one, right here, waiting to fill those concrete galoshes.</p><p>Jack never met the other men who played the Red Hood. When he got out, he'd have a specific warehouse to go to, and a group of goons who wanted a little money. They didn't know about the fake deal; they thought they were running a real racket with a real gang. What a joke! Then they'd case the joint, get in, get out—but not before Jack had gotten Batman's attention. That was the key. That's what they kept drilling in his head. <em>Do what you want—just make sure the Batman gets there</em>. He had good motivation. If he didn't get Batman, the police might get there first, and then it was game over for sure.</p><p>Jack didn't know what to think about this Batman guy. At first he'd thought he was in on it. But when he'd seen him swooping in all tights and black leather and <em>rage</em>, he'd realized two things pretty quick.</p><p>1) Batman was as much a sucker as him, and he didn't even <em>know</em> it.</p><p>2) Jack was in love.</p><p>It was a pretty complicated thought process to try to work through while being chased through a warehouse—or a broken-down pier—or a bunch of ramshackle apartments.</p><p>Jack didn't <em>do</em> love. At least he never had before. He'd considered being gay but then figured he didn't count, because he was never quite <em>interested</em>enough. Ditto women. Who needed em? Who needed any of it?</p><p>Well, Batman was making him reconsider.</p><p>"Come on, boys!" Jack whooped, gesturing to his goons as they ran from the caped crusader. "We've got to make a quick getaway before that Bat gets us!" He cackled madly. This… this was something he could get used to. It <em>almost</em> made this whole messed-up Supervillain Initiative worth it.</p><p>Of course, the Bat got them. Jack could feel Batman's sad, angry eyes staring at the back at his head as he dragged Jack into his black car. It was big, hulking, practically a menace. He called it… (wait for it) <em>The Batmobile</em>. And this guy was serious!</p><p>"So," Batman said, as they waited for the light to turn green. He was very conscientious about that. Once the chase was over, that is. He even bugged Jack into wearing his seatbelt. "Red Hood."</p><p>"Batman."</p><p>"This is the third time you've managed to break out of the Gotham State Penitentiary this month. Mind telling me how you're doing it?"</p><p><em>Is it that often?</em> Jack thought. <em>Damn, they're really taking advantage of this thing. Probably don't know how long it'll last</em>. Of course, none of those others had been him. He enjoyed this whole deal… maybe… but he wasn't going to commit to it; not like Scarecrow.</p><p>"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Red Hood said, smirking to himself. And Batman, of course, couldn't see a thing. It made Jack sad, suddenly. He wished he didn't have to hide behind this stupid mask. For a moment, he almost considered taking it off, looking Batman in the eyes, and confessing the whole sordid scheme.</p><p>Yeah, right. And even if Batman believed him, what good would it do? He couldn't stop the racket. These people lived in <em>very</em> high places. Probably higher than even a bat could fly.</p><hr/><p>There was another supervillain on Gotham State, who called himself Penguin.</p><p>"It wasn't <em>my</em> idea," the man said, slightly miffed. "Apparently I just <em>looked the part</em>," he squawked with some indignation.</p><p>Jack could imagine why. It wouldn't take an artist to come up with a better caricature of the rotund man. Crane had introduced them, of course; afternoons in the yard the three would cluster together and commiserate about the secret they could share with no one else. While they talked, the pigeons and crows that hopped their way along the barbed-wire fence would come down and flock around him, a mass of beaks and beating wings, bright inquisitive eyes. They would hop onto Cobblepot's fingers like they were domestic, and even sometimes let him pet their feathers.</p><p>"They recognize me, you see," Cobblepot revealed, with a conspiratorial grin; "I feed them at my window. They make better friends than anyone in here—present company excepted, of course."</p><p>"Of course." But Jack, rolling the irony of the words on his tongue, thought that sometimes Cobblepot overplayed his hand. Jack and Crane? Merely co-conspirators, thrown together by circumstances. He'd <em>chosen</em> his feathered friends; and it showed.</p><p>A few times, the pigeons would come with scrolls of paper tied around their legs. Penguin would carefully untie them, read whatever message his underlings had sent, and scratch out an answer on the other side with a dull stub of a pencil.</p><p>It took some doing, but Jack was persistent in dealing with the flighty things: carefully following Penguin's directions till they would hop on his hand too, though he always thought they retained a slight skepticism in their fowl expressions, as though uncertain why someone of Penguin's obvious good taste would trust a fellow like him.</p><p>Crane was the only one who didn't try to befriend the birds. If they got too close to his side of the table, he would <em>shoo</em> them ineffectually, with a weak waving of his arms that displayed his reluctance to actually come in contact with them at all. The pigeons, at best, seemed to annoy him: but if the occasional crow wandered his way he would go very still, and never quite take his eyes off it for more than a moment.</p><p>Jack learned more about birds from Cobblepot than he'd ever known; but he didn't mind listening to the man, because he was so obviously excited to have anyone show interest in his passion.</p><p>"Birds are smarter than people assume," Cobblepot said. "They're ubiquitous, unobtrusive, but quite canny. Crows particularly," he said, and chivvied away the crow that had been hopping curiously towards Crane. Jack didn't miss the man's shaky exhale, as Cobblepot brought the bird away. "They communicate with each other, not unlike humans; they remember faces, and they'll warn others of their kind if they've been ill-treated by an individual, and attack him."</p><p>"That's kinda funny," Jack said. He tilted his head, watching the crow watching him. "Remind me never to make an enemy of 'em."</p><p>Crane laughed shortly. "Birds have long memories," he said. Then paused; his spindly frame tall, his posture perfect; but his long fingers twisted together, the deep, gouged scars on the back of his hands glimmering pale. "I guess we all do."</p><hr/><p>So the Red Hood was fun, while it lasted. Not that it lasted very long. Some unfortunate sucker took a dip into a vat of acid when he was fighting Batman in the old Monarch Playing Card Company (now Ace Chemicals).</p><p>"Ouch," Jack said.</p><p>He'd been considered need-to-know, he suspected, because he'd been one of them. The Red Hood couldn't exactly continue to operate if he was very publically dead.</p><p>And then… "wait, so you're saying they had catwalks <em>directly over</em> their acid vats? Which were still full and uncovered even though it was the middle of the night? Who does that?"</p><p>Ace Chemicals, apparently.</p><p>Jack felt pretty lucky it hadn't been <em>him</em>.</p><hr/><p>The funny thing was, even in prison, you could continue your education, if you were motivated enough. And motivation had never been Jack's problem. He'd completed what Crane assured him was an Associates Degree in chemistry, along with reading every legal book he could get his hands on from the library. He'd gotten into this mess from not paying enough attention to all the angles; he wasn't going to make that mistake again. After the Red Hood fiasco, he began seriously considering making a suit out of this whole mess. The problem was, he doubted he was high-profile enough to get the media attention he needed. Plus, again, <em>masks</em>. They could argue he was lying about ever having been involved. And it was just so <em>ludicrous</em>.</p><p>So he put it aside; figuring, at least, that with the death of Red Hood they'd leave him alone.</p><p>He always had been too much of an optimist.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"What?" Jack shouted. "But I'm not crazy!"</p><p>Yeah; he knew. That's what they all say.</p><p>"You've been recorded to have manic-depressive episodes," the doctor said.</p><p>"Um… yeah?" Jack said. He fiddled with his handcuffs behind his back. <em>Click, click, click</em>. Funny thing about his line of work. He learned a lot of useful skills. "That doesn't mean I'm criminally insane. Uh, I robbed <em>one bank</em>, four years ago. Because I didn't have any money. I don't think that qualifies me to go to this… Arkham… place."</p><p>He didn't know if this doctor was in with the gatekeepers, or if she was just another pawn, but he suspected the former. Not that it made any difference. He'd made too much of a fuss about the Supervillain Initiative. He knew the truth. And what's even better than killing a man, to keep his secrets safe?</p><p>Discrediting him.</p><p>"Well, I'm sorry, Jack, but you've been chosen for the Arkham program. I'm heard it's very nice," the doctor assured him. "You'll receive quality treatment there."</p><p>"Yeah," Jack muttered. "That's what I'm afraid of."</p><p><em>Click</em>.</p><p>He brought his hands, free of the cuffs, around in front of him, leaping past the doctor and running. He didn't really kid himself he'd get far. These guys knew <em>everyone</em>. If they wanted him gotten he'd be gotten, just the way they wanted him. That didn't mean he had to make it easy on them.</p><p>Jack skidded past surprised guards, swinging his open handcuffs around like a lasso. He was screaming. Yelling insults, saying he'd been manipulated; that he was going to get them; that Gotham was ruled by a secret conspiracy of elites who met in a tiny room probably on the top of Wayne Tower and planned out their Supervillain Initiative in order to get money. Crazy, right?</p><p>Well, he'd always known how to put on a good show.</p><p>He didn't kill anyone, but he came pretty close. Certainly gave everyone something to <em>remember</em> him by.</p><hr/><p>They all had their ways of dealing with Arkham.</p><p>Scarecrow buried himself in his labs day and night, only emerging for mealtimes and the occasional psychiatric examination he couldn't blackmail himself out of. Penguin petitioned the ones who'd got them there in the first place, creating a detailed plan for how he might better serve the gatekeepers' interests as a man on the outside, under the front of a respectable business. Being rebuffed didn't slow him; he just revised his plans and sent more letters. And Jack…</p><p>"You critically injured… am I reading <em>thirty-five</em> guards, when you were told you were going to be moved to Arkham?"</p><p>"Mm-hm," Jack said, grinning.</p><p>"And you apparently said… that Gotham was ruled by a 'secret elite' that ran the world from the top of Wayne Tower?"</p><p>"Why would I say that?" Jack said. "That's <em>crazy</em>! Ha-ha-HAHAHAha! Ah, ahaha!"</p><p>"Jack! Mister Napier, if you would <em>please</em> calm down," his frazzled psychiatrist said. "I know you have problems with that, but if you take a deep breath—"</p><p>Jack didn't blame the man for being frazzled. He'd been told Jack was a psychopath with narcissistic and violent tendencies. He'd practically <em>flinched</em> when they dragged him in. Well. They weren't exactly lying about the violent tendencies. He'd gotten his last two psychiatrists put out of commission.</p><p>Why, you ask? Well, he figured he was in for life, the way things were going. And he might live in a madhouse but he didn't need people poking around in his head. The sooner everyone got that figured, the better. Crane had palmed him a little something that he had hidden up his sleeve, to make it <em>really</em>clear.</p><p>"Speaking of problems," Jack said, his laughter cutting off suddenly. He grinned at the not-quite-well-hidden-enough unfurling of tension in his doctor's shoulders. "You have a little… <em>problem</em> with laughter, don't you?" Jack said.</p><p>His doctor sighed. "I have a problem with you disrupting the session so you can…"</p><p>"A-ah! Don't <em>lie</em> doctor. You've got a little thing called geliophobia. (It's a pretty <em>funny</em> name for such a blindingly obvious problem!) Now, I wonder, <em>why</em> did they put you in here with me?" And, zziiing!</p><p>Just into his face, that gas-version of Scarecrow's toxin the doctor had created in Arkham's even roomier labs. The man began to scream.</p><p>"Sheesh," Jack said. "You'd think he was being <em>attacked</em> in here!" He leaped up, grabbed the pen the doctor had been fiddling with (always with the pen, those doctors!) "Oh wait, you are!"</p><p>He laughed madly (just to help the man along) while he gouged out his eyes.</p><p>Just something to make his position really. Clear.</p><p>(He'd always wanted to do this.)</p><hr/><p>It was almost funny, the difference between prison and an insane asylum. And by <em>funny</em>, Jack meant: not funny at all.</p><p>Prison was almost like the mob, if you knew the rules and played the game you'd be all right. Sure it was generally unpleasant, but then what part of Gotham wasn't?</p><p>Arkham, though. Arkham… the only rule there was that there <em>were</em> no rules. Reputation was still what you lived and died on, sure, but the doctors and guards here had a particular brand of unpleasantness Jack couldn't figure out. Obviously they thought their <em>sanity</em> made them superior. Pretty odd, to put such stock on something you couldn't even see or touch or prove the existence of, but then again people did that all the time.</p><p>Only thing was Jack had rarely seen such crazy things even among the criminals as the obsessive rituals they performed trying to keep everyone controlled, trying to convince themselves they had the upper hand.</p><p>Proving it through any means necessary.</p><hr/><p>"I design my next costume myself," Jack said. "Backstory. Title. The works."</p><p>"But I assure you," (this one was a nervous man; and wow, these gatekeepers really did keep sending in bait, didn't they? But Jack was trying to negotiate, so sadly, all those lovely ideas of how to make this guy's day <em>really interesting</em> had to go) "We have a number of costumes you might be interested in—"</p><p>"Ugh. Penny Plunderer? Too limiting. Calendar Man? Sounds like a lot of work; I can hardly keep track of the days in here anyway. The…" Jack squinted exaggeratedly. "<em>Condiment King?</em> You know, I'm really beginning to wonder which of us is supposed to be crazy, here. No," Jack put the papers down. "I do it my way, or you can say good-bye to my help."</p><p>"Fine," the man huffed. "Mr. Napier. Have it your way. Just don't take too long."</p><p>"Ha! You can't get enough of me!" Jack jeered as the man left.</p><hr/><p><em>"Laffy Arkham in the wood, eating children when he could</em>. <em>Underneath a moon of blood, swept away before the flood</em>."</p><p>"What the hell is that suppose to mean anyway?" Jack said.</p><p>"You mean you've never heard the story?" Nigma said. "I thought it was everywhere in Gotham."</p><p>"Heh. I'm not exactly a born Gothamite," Jack said.</p><p>Nigma looked at him quizzically. "I wouldn't have guessed."</p><p>"That's the idea," Jack slurred.</p><p>There were no cigarettes in the asylum. They were surprisingly good at keeping it out, afraid, perhaps, to recreate the criminal system that had so flourished in prison. But that didn't mean you couldn't get alcohol, if you wanted. And everyone wanted some, sooner or later. Even high-and-mighty insufferable jerks like Nigma.</p><p>They shared out another careful measure between the three of them, Catwoman picking up the tale. "This place used to be a fort, you know. Lafayette Arkham owned it. They say he was a vampire… or worse."</p><p>Jack closed his eyes. "Uh-huh," he said. "And now the song about a guy who preyed on children is a children's rhyme."</p><p>Catwoman shrugged. "It's a good story. People can't resist those."</p><p>"It's a riddle," Nigma said. "It calls up a question to which the answer seems obvious and yet elusive."</p><p>"It's a <em>f—ing</em> joke," Jack said.</p><p>"They say he's buried somewhere under the property," Kyle said. "That he and one of the ancestral Waynes had it out one day over a woman they both loved."</p><p>"I heard it was a quarrel over land," Nigma said.</p><p>Kyle shrugged. "Well if it was, there were better ways to solve the problem. In my experience, people get greedy about money and jewels, but the only thing that consistently makes them <em>crazy</em> is love."</p><p>"You're a romantic," Nigma said.</p><p>"I'm a cynic," Kyle replied.</p><p>"You're a drunkard," Jack said.</p><p>"Well, if you want to judge, I'm happy to take the rest of your glass," Kyle said.</p><p>"Thanks, I'll keep it," Jack said. He stared up into the groaning pipes of the storeroom above them. Somehow the asylum never got warm; probably because it was made of such thick stone. Even here, with boiling water close enough that if he touched the metal he'd burn himself.</p><hr/><p>He got a cell all to himself, in Arkham. Not that it was much to look at. It had a huge, barred window high up on the wall through which the moon streamed in every night, and the sun streamed in every morning. It didn't even come with <em>glass</em>, until Jack complained about it.</p><p>"So what's with this?" he said to Scarecrow. "You've got what might as well be a <em>palace</em> and I've got a <em>dump</em>!"</p><p>"That's because I play along," Scarecrow replied, boredly. "You cause trouble."</p><p>"Who said I never play along? Anyway; it's all your fault that I'm in here, and don't you forget it," Jack added in a growl. "You're the one who brought me to <em>their</em> attention."</p><p>"I always help you out when you need it, don't I?" Crane said.</p><p>Jack laughed shortly. "Sure. That's certainly <em>one</em> way to put it."</p><hr/><p>"Guy working on a construction site stubs his toe on a brick," Jack said.</p><p>The new doctor put his file down; gave him a long look over his spectacles.</p><p>"—He picks up the brick. It's got a number on it. <em>Brick 237</em>. The guy swears at the brick and chucks it out the window. He never sees brick 237 again."</p><p>"I believe you."</p><p>"…huh?" Jack said, suspiciously.</p><p>The doctor sat down on the other side of the table, opened his hands with a shrug. "Your story about how you've been coerced into a project by people in the highest levels of Gotham society. It's entirely out there; it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but that's exactly what they want."</p><p>"…tell me who you are again?"</p><p>Jonathan Ryan, more known for his cult-TV show exposing the weirdest frauds in America had taken an interest in Gotham's new subsection of society, the people calling themselves Supervillains.</p><p>"I've interviewed all the main players," Ryan said, checking off the list on his fingers. "Professor Crane, Mr. Cobblepot, Mr. Nigma, Miss Selina Kyle. None of them would talk much, but I learned some interesting information nonetheless. They all, of course, appeared at around the same time—within the same five-month period. They all had surprisingly consistent gimmicks, more analogous to a theatrical persona than a criminal obsession. All exclusively target Batman, but seemed completely content with the fact that Batman always defeats them. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I doubted it. Still, I had nothing to go on, nothing but hints and whispers, until I was able to get hold of the transcript relating your attack on the guards pending your transfer from Gotham State Penitentiary to Arkham Asylum. You said, and I quote, 'I've been manipulated by the system… there's a select group of people high up—probably on the roof of Wayne Tower—planning something they call the supervillain initiative. The motive is simple, to make money off the destruction these "supervillains" cause. Gotham sucks; in what other city could the one percent actually get away with setting low-level criminals up as a system of free entertainment for the masses while profiting off their incarceration? Oh, right.'—eloquent and uncannily accurate, Mr. Napier. I, for one, cannot see this as the mere ramblings of a lunatic. But perhaps you'd care to explain what you meant."</p><p>"…It was a good show," Jack said. "That's all."</p><p>"I see," Ryan said. "Please, at least consider talking. If you became the whistleblower for something on this scale, I could buy a lawyer to clear you of all charges, if that's what you're worried about."</p><p>"A fine example of overturning corruption," Jack said drily. "It's not that I'm not intrigued, Mr. Ryan, I'm just not sure you can really pull off what you think you can."</p><p>"I've managed to before," Ryan said calmly. "Just consider it. I'll come back tomorrow."</p><p>That evening, just as he had expected, Jack got a little visit.</p><p>"Hello, old pals," he said, sitting cross-legged on his bed and watching the line come in.</p><p>"You're not planning to talk," Crane said.</p><p>"Of course not," Jack said, wounded; holding a hand to his breast. "What kind of a turncoat do you take me for?—Anyway, the man's a hack."</p><p>"I don't believe him," Kyle said after a moment.</p><p>"Because you're our resident psychiatrist now?" Jack muttered. "Come on, Cat; I'm too much of a coward to turn tail for something this unlikely. You know I only go for sure things."</p><p>"Okay, Jack," Kyle said. "<em>That</em> I believe."</p><p>"It's still a problem, though," Nigma muttered. "What will we do if he manages to <em>prove</em> it?"</p><p>"He won't," Cobblepot squawked. "Not unless one of <em>us</em> talks." He peered meaningfully around the room. "And none of us are planning to do so. You heard the man—all he has are suspicions."</p><p>"Still, something has to be done," Nigma said. "Why can't Napier attack him, like his other doctors?" Four heads turned in Jack's direction.</p><p>"I won't do your dirty work for you," Jack said. "I'm just planning to wait until he gets tired and leaves, I swear." He actually had a rather funny joke in mind, but the others' insistence that he solve their 'problem' made him angry. And made him <em>think</em>. They had to be really afraid this guy might actually have a chance, if they'd bothered to come here and make threats.</p><p>"Sure you are," Kyle murmured, unconvinced.</p><p>"Think of it as something to help your reputation along," Crane said with a slow smile.</p><p>"Screw you, Scarecrow." At the unimpressed silence, Jack crossed his arms. "Fine, fine, I'll take care of it. Just remember you owe me one."</p><hr/><p>"I'll think about it," Jack told Ryan, "but I need to know how it's all going to work. Convince me."</p><p>So Ryan did: while under the guise of watching old film reels, taking close note of Jack's reaction; while showing him images of ink-blots that never failed to look like anything other than bats. He'd come for the story, not for Jack, but there was something admirable after all in his fervent belief; his idea that he could be a singlehanded agent of justice, that he could overturn even Arkham's edifice.</p><p>Every moment, Jack knew, he could say the word, make a statement, start the machinery rolling on a case against the ones who got him in here in the first place: and every moment, he thought of how the other supervillains would get him for a snitch before he could ever stand as witness.</p><p>But if he could convince Ryan that he was insane, he could smooth everything over with the gang; make the man move on to other cases, somewhere far from Gotham. But no matter the elliptical warnings he gave, the rambling stories of the violence he'd inflicted, the carefully-revealed obsessions and neuroses, that belief never wavered. It made Jack angry, and antsy, and he could feel <em>Brick 237</em>, a heavy weight, pushed into the corner.</p><p>"Please, just give me a chance," Ryan begged, one late afternoon just before the guards came to end their session. "I know you doubt me but all I need is<em>you</em>. I can get you transferred, give you protection… what do you need?"</p><p>"I need…" Jack's eyes flicked up to him. "I need you to leave. Now."</p><p>"Why? What made you change your mind?" Ryan was desperate, seeing his chance at fame and fortune slip away.</p><p><em>I realized I don't want to hurt you</em>, Jack thought. <em>I realized you may be a hack doctor, but you don't deserve</em> this.</p><p>"It just wasn't funny anymore," Jack said, his voice sounding faraway to his own ears.</p><p>"Then I guess we're through, Mr. Napier," Ryan said, disappointed. He finished his glass of drugged water, none the wiser.</p><p>"I guess we are, Ryan."</p><p>The doctor could still get up. Walk away. Even if he collapsed, Arkham had a prime medical facility; they'd patch him up before any harm was done.</p><p>As long as he wasn't beaten with a blunt object first.</p><p>"You know, I thought you were a reasonable man," Ryan admitted, putting his papers in order, his movements infinitesimally slowed. "I admired your intellect, your wit. I thought you weren't like the others, that you actually cared about changing things."</p><p>"And now?"</p><p>The doctor paused. Looked up, but the light from the single bulb shone from his glasses like twin moons. Reached out his hand: rested it on the doorknob.</p><p>"—I think you're a coward."</p><p>It was a brick joke.</p><p>Literally.</p><p>One of his finer moments, Jack thought. And it left poor Ryan in a coma.</p><p>He felt bad about it, once it was done. At least he thought he did. It all floated by on the haze of the guards' shouts, the nurses' screams. But it was just a joke, so that made it all okay; it was the kind of comedy that any adoring audience ought to appreciate.</p><p>"How'd I do, doc?" he asked the blurred face of Crane, floating pale-faced above him. Crane could get in anywhere in Arkham—even solitary, where Jack had been put, after. He was sneakier than a mouse.</p><p>"Heavy-handed," Crane said, sitting beside him, "but I suppose it does the job."</p><p>"Well you didn't ask for <em>Mozart</em>," Jack groused. He'd wriggled free of the straightjacket's ties hours ago and put it under his head for a makeshift pillow. The one small window, high in the ceiling, showed it to be some time after midnight; the sky was just beginning to pale. "Hey… did you just make a <em>joke</em>?"</p><p>"I don't understand what you—"</p><p>"<em>Heavy-handed</em>," Jack repeated. Crane froze up, unaccountably guilty. Jack chuckled. "You <em>did</em>!"</p><hr/><p>So he was knocking around the drafty place, nothing to do to keep him busy, because, <em>surprise</em>! Jack liked to keep busy. The more action he was involved in, the better. Whoever thought it would keep him well-behaved to put him in a cell by himself didn't know him at all—but then, they never pretended to know him.</p><p>Jack was kicking at the walls and shaking the bars, trying to find some way out. Not that he really believed he'd get one. He'd get a <em>free ride</em> out, as soon as he could think up his new gimmick. But he wanted this one to be <em>his</em>. When he found the secret passageway, he thought at first he was imagining things. This place used to be a fort, right? Not a haunted house. But there it was. A real, actual secret passageway inside his cell.</p><p>"Now <em>this</em> is interesting," Jack said, dropping down into the hole. He felt out with his hands stretched in front of him, then stumbled over something and fell, bumping his head. "Ow, ow, ow! I knew I should've brought a light." He felt around on the ground to see what it was he'd tripped over.</p><p>And screamed. <em>Okay</em>, so it was what definitely seemed like a bone. That's not so bad. Jack was sure there were a lot of reasons for bones to be lying around under his cell. Yup. Not creepy at all. There… there were <em>more</em> bones. He was pretty sure this was a whole skeleton. Jack laughed a little, shakily. Okay. Okay, he was going to get a light, and then he was going to come back and this would all stop being eerie, and start making a little more sense.</p><p>He went back into his cell. They'd given him candles, as strange as that was. But it's not like he could do much damage with it in here, probably. The whole cell was made up of stone and wrought iron. He could burn his things, if he wasn't careful, but it still wouldn't get him out of here.</p><p>So he lit the candle and turned around.</p><p>Somehow, the hole looked darker than it should, even with the moonlight outlining its shadow.</p><p><em>It's just a secret passage</em>, Jack thought, annoyed. <em>That should be cool. I think it's cool. Don't I?</em> He wasn't scared of it. There was no <em>reason</em> for the feeling that something was <em>regarding</em> him from inside the passage, telling him to enter. Beckoning him. No: <em>commanding</em> him.</p><p>Jack didn't like being commanded. But. He also didn't believe in superstitions. Being afraid of a little darkness? You'd think too much exposure to Doctor Crane would have gotten him over that years ago. (But he's never been afraid of the dark before, not even when he <em>should</em> be—)</p><p>Gotham was an <em>ordinary</em> city. Corrupt, yes, but <em>ordinary</em>. And Arkham was an <em>ordinary</em> mental hospital, and this was an <em>ordinary</em> secret passageway with the sounds of <em>something</em> crawling around inside it; something with large, dragging wings, too big to even fit in the space. Jack peered down, and the candlelight flickered on the walls. See? Nothing to be afraid of. He stepped inside, grinning in relief, even chuckling a little at the scare he'd given himself. And there was the skeleton, just like he'd thought. No… <em>two</em> skeletons.</p><p>My, my. What have we here.</p><p>It amused Jack for what seemed like hours, though the darkness stayed as thick and gelatinous as ever. He thought he could hear something breathing in the dark behind him; but that was ridiculous, of course, because the candle lit the entire round chamber.</p><p>Then he looked up.</p><p>And saw the joke, written on the wall in old blood, dried and swarming with millions of maggots; not on stone but on/just on the wall. An ordinary wall.</p><p><em>WE'VE BEEN WAITING</em>, it said. And inside it was a million tunnels, leading to: <em>something</em> that had been sleeping for eons, but the unsettled dreaming will of which had dripped through the porous stone.</p><p>— a sound like laughter. But it wasn't coming from <em>him</em>.</p><p>"Remember old Laffy Arkham?" the Clown said, as Jack whirled around. It picked up his candle, nevermind that it shouldn't be here, that it shouldn't be<em>real</em>. "They thought I was a vampire. '<em>Laffy Arkham in the wood, eating children when he could</em>. <em>Underneath a moon of blood, swept away before the flood</em>.' But I'm something worse than that." His stretched, grinning smile flashed in Jack's direction. "I'm <em>Gotham</em>, and I've taken such a <em>fancy</em> to you."</p><p>"I'm not insane," Jack said, shakily. (He's never hallucinated before; not unless he'd been drugged by Scarecrow. And. Of <em>course</em> that must be what this was; what else would bring that feeling of terror)</p><p>There was a sudden chorus of high-pitched shrieks from every corner, the sounds of bats rustled around him, louder, turning into laughter that came from the Clown's mouth. He knew why everyone was afraid of clowns. Because their mouths should never <em>move</em> like that. And suddenly he <em>saw</em> it: past the emptiness and the stone, to the dark, black-veined center of Gotham itself, moving ashes through its heart made of bodies. <em>Put on the mask, we made it for you</em>, it sang.</p><p>"You know who you are," the Clown said. "You know who I am."</p><p>He didn't look at it: couldn't look at it: trembling. It stalked behind him, pulled him close against it like a parody of an embrace: let go of the candle to do it, and it stayed there in midair as though it was sitting on something as solid and immoveable as the earth. Jack stared into the flame, which mocked by the shapes it formed, falling both inward and outward. The wax dripped grotesquely onto his hands.</p><p>"J… j… Joker," he said.</p><p>He cleaned the blood off the walls with his own spit, while around him, he could hear the gates creaking open on a thousand amusement parks lying abandoned, unsafe mechanisms rusting to life, and the calliope began to play.</p><hr/><p>It was morning, and he'd closed the secret passageway. But he couldn't forget about it; couldn't forget what he'd <em>seen</em>. It had to be Scarecrow's fault; or perhaps whatever drugs they were giving him these days were actually designed to make him go crazy. It was a paranoid thought. It should have been horrible; terrifying. But Jack felt only a sick feeling of relief. An answer like that would make <em>sense</em>. The only alternative was that it was <em>real</em>: that he'd seen what he had seen. That there was something terribly wrong about Gotham, something <em>different</em>, so deep in its bones that even razing the city to the ground wouldn't change it. Like an echo of other worlds, millions of them all existing one after another and all in concert; dead and living at the same time. He thought he remembered the joke.</p><p>But he pushed it aside.</p><p>"I'm just crazy," Jack said. He looked around the room, as though the people he felt, he <em>knew</em> were watching, would nod their heads in agreement. But of course he was alone. "It's the logical… conclusion." His mouth was dry. Somehow the light of day ought to have dispelled the memory of the nightmare—of course! That's what it had been. Just a <em>nightmare</em>.</p><p><em>We're even less real than the others, just a budding vein bursting from the cancer, growing around itself with teeth</em>—</p><p>Jack put his hands over his ears, squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm not <em>listening</em> to you!" he said, as though he was a child again. As though being obnoxious would make it go away. "I'm not <em>listening</em> to you, and I don't care!" Somehow—miraculously—everything changed.</p><p>The paper-thin sunlight became warm.</p><p>The bed stopped feeling insubstantial enough to float away.</p><p>And he'd forgotten what the joke was (no he hadn't) but at least. At least he could pretend that nothing has happened.</p><p>The candle, by his feet, had burned all the way down, straight through the center without touching the edges at all. The wick was gone; and the flame with it. Leaving only a smooth cylinder of wax, thinner than a fingernail.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’d been thinking about a chemical formula, since <em>the nightmare</em>. It had appeared to him fully-formed, almost as though it wasn’t his own thought, but no matter how many times he’d twisted and turned it, it was still there. It was an <em>interesting</em> formula. So he’d invited himself into Scarecrow’s labs to work on it.</p><p>He gulped down the contents of the concoction he made and stared at himself in the mirror; marveling at the real-time transformation from ordinary skin, brown hair, to something sickly white and pale as wax… or bone.</p><p>“Extraordinary,” Scarecrow said. Jack hadn’t let him see the formula in the making, but he’d let him hang around for the finale, just in case something went wrong. Well, it didn’t go <em>wrong</em>, per se, though he hadn’t expected all the effects. Along with the ghostly white skin came green hair; bright, shockingly green, as though it had been dyed. And his eyes, which had been brown all his life, were now two colors: the left one an acid-bright green, the right an unnatural purple.</p><p>“Do you ever consider,” Jack said, as he rinsed out his instruments, and then sterilized them (it wouldn’t do for Scarecrow to copy his work, after all) “that there’s something in the water, here?”</p><p>“In Arkham, or in all of Gotham?” Scarecrow said.</p><p>“Heh.” Jack grinned a little, companionably, and then fell silent.</p><p>“All the time.”</p><p>“I feel like I’m Doctor Jekyll,” Jack said, looking down at his hand. “About to set something free.”</p><p>Crane laughed creakily beside him. “Cosmetic changes only. You haven’t turned into a completely different person.”</p><p>“Yes,” Jack said. He lowered his hand, and stared off into the memory of the nightmare. There. And waiting. “Yes, of course. You’re right.”</p><hr/><p>Ever since he was a kid Jack had been interested in magic. <em>Tricks</em>, that is: he didn’t believe in all that spooky mumbo-jumbo. But the <em>performance</em>? The brilliance of a lie that everyone believed despite their own better judgment, their rationality, because they couldn’t help themselves? What could be <em>better</em>?</p><p>If Jack could do magic he could make things happen. It gave him control, power, an audience. And it gave him something to do with his hands besides fidget.</p><p>He’d practiced on the way to school as he walked, flipping a quarter through his hands, dropping it, picking it up again, until he could make it dance and flash between his fingers: now you see me, now you don’t. Then he’d stolen a deck of cards from one of his classmates. No one ever found out it was him. He’d read, carefully, the one tattered book on magic in the library, until he’d gotten tired of having to get it out again and again. So one day he just slipped it into his bag and walked out of the building with it, with no one the wiser, and from that day on it was his.</p><p>He carefully defaced his cards to practice different ways of marking them. Then got bored and started doodling monsters. He folded the Joker cards in half so he didn’t have to stare at their grinning clown face, but would always end up finding them back in his hand, or his pocket, or under the desk, even when he threw them away.</p><p>It was disturbing. He didn’t know why, but he felt like the cards were following him. But that was ridiculous, of course. Magic wasn’t <em>real</em>. Cards didn’t just get up and walk back to their stack in the middle of the night, unfold themselves and slip inside a cardboard box.</p><p>So he stopped getting rid of them, and practiced flipping through until the sight of those faces no longer made his hands shake.</p><hr/><p>They gave him everything he asked for, of course. The pinstripe suit, not quite lavender but not a deep purple either. A long trench coat, also purple, and a hat. He’d dithered on his face for a while; thought it looked a little <em>empty</em>, all white like that, like his mouth had almost disappeared. So he requested some makeup, the brightest, rubiest red, like blood. That made everything a little better. He’d messed around a bit more; lined his eyes a bit to make them pop. It was a <em>good</em> look. It was a <em>clown</em> look, which meant of course, terrifying but also kind of funny. Is this guy for real?</p><p>Yes. Yes he is.</p><p>Purple gloves too, to hide his fingerprints. Just in case. He looked <em>classy</em>. Green waistcoat, orange flower—he’d need to <em>do</em> something with that flower, make it a gag. He tried on the pair of spats, turned this way and that in the mirror. Ugh. Too gangster.</p><p>
  <em>(He’d had enough of that to last a lifetime—)</em>
</p><p>He went with the black pumps instead, and tried to pretend he didn’t know why.</p><p>Jack felt like he was getting ready for a date. Well. <em>Wasn’t</em> he, though? A date with Batman. His debut! His coming out into supervillain society. He thought he could be forgiven for a few butterflies in his stomach; a little residual nervousness. <em>It’s not like you’re gonna faint or something</em>, Jack reminded himself. <em>You’ve met him before</em>.</p><p>But wait. Batman… Batman wasn’t going to know that. They’d be strangers. They couldn’t be <em>strangers</em>. Somehow he had to tell Batman that he’d been the Red Hood. (Never mind that a careful bit of sleuthing would show that Jack had been in Gotham State when Red Hood took the dive; Batman wasn’t going to <em>know</em> that Joker had anything to do with Jack Napier, though he wasn’t wearing a mask. And wouldn’t that be the kicker! His <em>disguise</em> was his own face!)</p><p>But how? Maybe… maybe he had to put on a little show at the chemical plant. Surely some of those goons would remember where the fall had happened, and be able to show him ahead of time.</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, and what if he pushes you in too?</em>
</p><p>Jack smiled at himself. <em>I’m not going to be frightened</em>, he thought. <em>Not of death, not of anything. I’m going to frighten</em> other <em>people</em>.</p><p>He’d just have to be very, very careful he didn’t step close to the edge.</p><hr/><p>They never talked about it. The way nearly every voice message Joker left for the police, because how <em>else</em> was he ever going to reach Batman, read like a courtship. Surely, Gordon had, behind his bristling moustache, sometimes considered stomping his cigarette to the ground and demanding to know why the Joker thought the GCPD needed to be serenaded.</p><p>He had to admit it; Gordon was a fair hand at poker.</p><p>In between schoolboy giggles, he’d recorded snatches of whatever tune was stuck in his head that day. “My dear darling batty bat… still haven’t found those hostages yet, have you?” With a playful lilt. “Maybe you need a clue.”</p><p>And making any unfortunate have to suffer through his warbling before he got to the point. Ah: but what <em>was</em> the point?</p><p>
  <em>“Even though I walk alone, you guide me<br/>In the darkness, you light my way<br/>And all the while inside me, love seems to say<br/>Some day, some day</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And when I sleep you keep my heart awake<br/>But when I wake from dreams divine<br/>Every breath that I take<br/>Is a prayer that I'll make you mine…”</em>
</p><p>One might assume that the Bat, at least, would let on that he knew of Joker’s intentions. It wasn’t entirely… subtle. Perhaps he would refuse to play; that would be one answer. Perhaps he would bring the subject up face to face and treat him unkindly… that it never seemed to factor into Batman’s calculations at all made a warm little flame glow in Joker’s chest. It would have been so <em>easy</em> for Batman to take offense. So many people did; even if it wasn’t true, at least in the <em>insert tab a into slot b</em> ways most people considered necessary for love.</p><hr/><p>Joker spent <em>time</em> on his plans. He wanted to make them memorable. He wanted, specifically, Batman’s attention; and as long as he had Batman’s attention and the guy caused enough property damage, they were good to go. So he went wild.</p><p>“You need a giant…mechanical… rooster?”</p><p>“Mm-hm,” Joker said. “Well, actually, I’d take a giant <em>real</em> rooster if you have one, but I figure that might be above your payroll.” This new goon was one of <em>them</em>; Joker had him pegged from the start. So he’d had a lot of fun thinking up outlandish things to requisition.</p><p>“Why?” the goon had the audacity to ask.</p><p>“Why? Who’s the boss around here?” Joker said. “You don’t need to know why.”</p><p>The goon frowned. Probably wanted to remind Joker that he was, in fact, the boss. But <em>a-ah</em>, that’s not the way we play the game. His tongue was tied. He probably did know Joker was onto him, but he had to keep up the act of plausible deniability. It was priceless, really.</p><p>So. Why did Joker need a giant rooster? That’s a good question. He was thinking of riding it out of the back of a truck and making a quip about why the chicken crossed the road. He <em>also</em> wanted to test out his new laughing gas, which would hopefully keep everyone so paralyzed with laughter that he could rob the bank. It was a deceptively simple plan, when you took away the bells and whistles. Drive up; test the mixture; steal things, if possible. Everything else was part of the performance.</p><hr/><p>And then there was that time with the fish.</p><p>(He’d really liked that plan, honestly. There was no reason it <em>shouldn’t</em> have worked; except, of course, that he hadn’t been able to go through the official channels in the correct way. And that he was a wanted criminal. It really did tend to wreak havoc with his moneymaking schemes.)</p><p>And that time Joker got Batman to fly a plane the wrong way.</p><p>And, one time, Batman even fought a shark to the death. Joker loved this deal.</p><p>He especially loved the way Batman got so very <em>angry</em> when he fought; like he was just on the edge of snapping something really, really important. Joker wanted to know what would happen when Batman snapped. It was only a matter of time till it happened. He wanted to watch the show.</p><p>So he was a fan, okay? Anyone would be. <em>Everyone</em> was. Batman was free entertainment. They’d even gotten a number of new villains that Joker was fairly certain had never even <em>heard</em> of the Supervillain Initiative; and that cracked him up. Once this thing got going it really ran itself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a rhythm to these things. Joker would cause trouble, Batman would show up, they’d have some laughs and the game would start all over again.</p><p>That’s the way it <em>had</em> to be, because Joker was the villain. He couldn’t <em>win</em>. That would mean Batman dead, and who really wants that? If Batman dies, the show’s over. The curtain falls. It’s an ending, and Joker had in mind a better one. You see, if <em>Batman</em> killed <em>him</em>… well. It would change <em>everything</em>. The whole house of cards would topple. That perfect Dark Knight, paragon of Justice? He’s <em>fallible</em>. He’s <em>broken</em>. It was really the only way <em>to</em> win—to prove to everyone that the world they thought they lived in, with its easy black and white divisions was all just a flashy illusion.</p><p>But he didn’t need to hurry that on. He was sure it would all happen in time.</p><p>Here and now, the Joker was running from Batman, cackling like a loon, not really caring that his goons had been knocked out, his plans foiled, his immediate future already marked for a visit back to the old homestead. This was the thrill he craved. The kind of larger-than-life playacting that others could only <em>dream</em> of. He turned his head to catch another glimpse of his pursuer, trying to gauge how much time he had to make a hasty escape—or if he’d better turn around and make a stand now. Then he slipped on the edge of the roof somehow and went <em>falling</em>…</p><p>Oops!</p><p>He was saved from a nasty impact with the concrete by a grapping hook wrapping itself around his leg. He dangled just a few feet from the ground as the <em>whirr</em> of another cord signaled the Bat’s descent, to stand looking at him with that stone-faced expression—not moving, not really doing anything at all for a long moment, only watching him. Joker giggled a little. “Thinking of trying for a kiss, bat-brain?” He poked Batman in the chest a little with his hand, and Batman grabbed his wrist, still not reacting further. “Promise I’ll bite.” He grinned.</p><p>“One of these days you’re going to get yourself killed,” Batman said.</p><p>Joker laughed. “Not when I have <em>you</em> to save me!”</p><p>Batman dropped his wrist at last, roughly, and scowled at him.</p><p>“You shouldn’t treat your life like a game, Joker. It’s real—there are consequences to your actions—”</p><p>“Oh darling, I <em>know</em> all that,” Joker said. “But where would we be if we didn’t let ourselves have a little fun?” He wrapped his arms around Batman’s neck, used the sudden lack of tension on his ankle to kick his way free from the grapple and vaulted down, trying to make a run for it. Before he’d even gotten two steps, though, Batman had tackled him to the ground, pinning him there, crashing one fist into his face and ribs. Enough to <em>hurt</em>, oh yes, his Bat was always thoughtful like that. Not enough to really injure him though, to take him out of the game entirely, when one well-placed blow could stop him: break his legs! Break his <em>neck</em>! The Bat liked to play rough but he would never break his toys. Joker laughed, taking it all, goading him, “come on baby… harder… you know you want to…”</p><p>“You’re sick,” Batman said, disdainfully, and obliged.</p><p>“Hahaha! Pot…” Joker turned his head and spit out blood, “kettle…”</p><p>When he turned back he could see Batman eyeing the blood in his mouth with something like fascination. Such an interesting flaw the Batman had left himself, leaving his eyes uncovered, vulnerable. Like he didn’t mind when Joker tried to poke them out.</p><p>Or like he didn’t mind when the Joker saw <em>into</em> them.</p><p>Joker opened his mouth a little wider, licked his lips and took the next crashing blow of his skull into the pavement. Then the Bat did something even <em>more</em> interesting… brought one finger to that bloody mess all smeared about his mouth ground in with lipstick and mud. Let it rest there while Joker breathed around his fingers and then stuck his hand in further so that Joker gagged and choked.</p><p>“How do you like that, then?” Batman said. He withdrew his hand, waited until the Joker stopped coughing and laughing, doubled over.</p><p>“You poor batty bat, you think you’re hurting me?” he said. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth, grimaced at the mess that had been made of his clothes, then shrugged. “Well I have to say choking’s not my thing but if it’s yours I’ll <em>happily</em> play along…”</p><p>“It’s not a <em>game</em>, Joker,” Batman said. Joker rolled his eyes. His other hand, feeling in his pocket, had his knife out in a flash, driving it straight through Batman’s armor, raking its way down across Batman’s chest and then burying it to the hilt. <em>Carefully</em>, though. Wouldn’t want to end the game so soon. He had to remember that, only sometimes the look of agony that was <em>his</em>, all <em>his</em>, made him forget.</p><p>Another punch turned his world into a spinning whirl of stars and birds. Then Batman dragged him to his feet. “Damned clown,” he muttered. Holding the Joker away from him gingerly like he hadn’t just been sitting on top of him two seconds ago.</p><p><em>And, end scene</em>, Joker thought triumphantly. <em>One point to the Clown Prince of Crime! </em></p><hr/><p>Johnny Johnny had the bluest blue eyes Joker had ever seen, except on Batman.</p><p>“I don’t trust ‘im,” Henshaw said flatly. “What kinda guy would <em>tell</em> you where his wife ‘n kids lived?”</p><p>“Maybe he wanted to commiserate?” Joker said. He shrugged; he honestly didn’t care and had forgotten the address as soon as the man told him. He’d probably written it down somewhere. “Anyway, I can always use new henchpeople.”</p><p>Henshaw’s gaze followed his to where Johnny Johnny was making fast friends with the rest of the gang as they set up the cameras for their next gig. The man had <em>ideas</em> about shots and angles and sensational storytelling, which was good because most of these guys couldn’t see a crowd-pleaser if it did cartwheels in front of them. Joker was fairly sure hiring the man was the best idea he’d gotten in ages.</p><hr/><p>Jeremiah Arkham was tangentially related to old Laffy, or so the story goes. He swanned into Arkham one day with <em>plans</em>. It became clear pretty soon that he wasn’t in on the joke; which was funny enough. He’d done his own amount of bribery and blackmail to get where he was, and he had his name on his side. But he didn’t know about the supervillains. Didn’t understand why security was so lax; why themed obsessions were allowed to have such sway. With his private enforcer, a man privately dubbed <em>Lock-Up</em>—for you can’t have a villain without a title—he set out to improve Arkham in all ways.</p><p>Crane got on his bad side from the start. When Arkham instituted curfews with guards that patrolled the corridors, Crane stayed in his lab till the middle of the night, till he was dragged away. Once he was heard yelling, “I want to speak with your manager!” —but the guards didn’t oblige. When Arkham decided to institute experimental new therapies to get funding from medical experiments, Crane loudly (and sarcastically) derided the efficacy of anything that left its “cured” patients gibbering in a corner. When Arkham turned the other way from guards getting a little “payback” on the inmates, Crane somehow arranged for them to get a novel case of food poisoning that made each of them experience their worst nightmare for twenty-four hours.</p><p>“What was that about you playing along?” Joker said, with a grin, dropping in on Crane’s spot in the dusty old corner of a library, where the man was reading dog-eared medical journals.</p><p>“It’s just unconscionable,” Crane muttered, distractedly moving piles of books off the seat beside him so Joker could sit down. “It’s not what I signed up for at all. Are they trying to get rid of us? Are they waiting for one of us to take care of him, because they can’t replace him? Why haven’t they sent a representative?”</p><p>Joker shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not like we have <em>rights</em>. They probably don’t even care.”</p><p>Crane stared at him, a harsh, bright look in his eyes. “They <em>need</em> us,” he said. “They can’t just throw us under the bus; it’s not <em>logical</em>. Who would they use for their schemes if they just abandoned us?”</p><p>“A bunch of new guys, more easily controlled?” Joker said. “What do <em>you</em> do, when your mooks get got with fear toxin? There’s always a new batch, right?”</p><p>“But we’re <em>supervillains</em>,” Crane said tightly. “We’re not replaceable. You can’t just <em>replace</em> career criminals, college professors, geniuses with doctorates, with some random high-school dropout off the street who never even learned how to read!”</p><p>“So take it up with them if you have a problem,” Joker said.</p><p>“I’ve tried,” Crane said. He pressed his lips together. “They won’t answer. They won’t talk.”</p><hr/><p>Kyle followed Penguin out, but she took it a step further. Got herself an entire new identity and lived the civilian life. “I want to end up rich, not dead,” she said.</p><p>“Quite smart of her, I must say,” Nigma said. “I’m actually considering going straight myself.”</p><p>“Like they’ll let you,” Joker said.</p><p>“That’s exactly it,” Nigma said. “If they want us out of the way, this is the <em>best</em> time to lay low. As long as I don’t cause trouble, I doubt they’d follow me. I think I could turn my talents and expertise to crime-solving, don’t you think?”</p><p>Joker tilted his head. “Eh, I don’t see it.”</p><p>But Nigma, rarely one to take no for an answer, moved to the Narrows and set up as a private detective, taking a pittance of a fee and keeping his head down. It was the last thing Joker would have expected; a man as flamboyant as <em>The Riddler</em> letting the waves of obscurity wash over him. But then again, before becoming a supervillain Nigma had worked in a company designing videogames until a big enough blow to his pride turned his course. The hours and working environment, Nigma said, were much better now—and he actually got recognition for his work.</p><hr/><p>“What was it this time?” Luthor asked with a smirk, when Joker limped into Metropolis and co-opted his penthouse. “Stabbed with your own knife, hit by a train, or fallen off a precipice? I never can remember.”</p><p>“Helicopter accident,” Joker said shortly.</p><p>“Ah, helicopter accident,” Luthor said. “Of course.” He discreetly got medics on hand to deal with Joker’s burns and left him to it until Joker got fed up with the care and escaped—only minorly injuring the staff. After all, it didn’t do to burn one’s bridges.</p><p>Escaped into Lex’s personal rooms, that is.</p><p>It was a simple matter of <em>quid pro quo</em>: Luthor was attracted to him, Joker could deliver, it relaxed both parties and kept everything running smoothly. Call it friends with benefits. To Luthor, emotions were as alien as the rest of humanity he disdained. Sure, he understood it, but at a scientific remove. The tangibility of a sexual liaison sorted Joker neatly into a box he could keep an eye on. Harleen Quinzel, with the detached remove of the systematist dissecting biology, would later call him a sociopath: a pet theory all ready to print upon the man’s death. Joker didn’t bother with the labels; all he needed to know was how to <em>play</em> him. On Luthor’s side, his on-again, off-again fling with a notorious supervillain was the action and insanity he’d always craved, packaged neatly where he could control it. On Joker’s, it was a place to hole up, good company, all the money and wonderful toys he could ever want.</p><p>Conversely: it was rarely one could really be in the presence of an intellectual equal, and that kind of a relationship was worth almost anything.</p><p>In the darkest part of the night, Luthor slipped onto the roof, Joker waking from an idle doze and following him onto the flat expanse. The billionaire had an astronomy setup even here, of course, where light pollution made it all but useless. It was the kind of hobby Luthor felt bereft without the ability to fiddle around with, during off moments.</p><p>“Still searching for UFOs, Lexy?”</p><p>Luthor grunted without looking his way. “Go back to bed, Joker,” he said. Like anyone well versed in the art of annoyance, Joker declined the offer and joined him instead. He stood by the cold machine into which Luthor peered, and stared with naked eyes into the pinpricked blackness.</p><p>“Don’t you think we would have found evidence by now, if there were any?” he said.</p><p>“The universe is a vast place,” Luthor said. “Full of more mysteries than humanity could ever solve. Which is <em>exactly</em> why I have to try.” He took his eye from the scope, looked Joker over, a mass of pale skin, bruised and mottled like some noxious, poison flower, and sighed. Joker smiled winningly back.</p><p>“Why don’t you give it up?” Lex said plainly. “I have enough people to give you a new life as whatever you want. Scientist, politician, businessman,” he said with some self-depreciation— “although I’m not sure what I would do if we were rivals.”</p><p>“Try to kill me, probably,” Joker said lightly.</p><p>Luthor took the lack of rebuff as permission to keep going. “You could switch it up whenever you got bored. Participate in solving problems of your intellectual caliber. Gotham’s done nothing but, in your own words, screw you over. I don’t understand why you’d let yourself be limited like that.”</p><p>“Now Lex,” Joker said, tripping his fingers up the side of the telescope. “Why do you keep searching the skies, when all you ever find are birds and planes?”</p><p>Luthor sighed. “You’re impossible.”</p><hr/><p>He did consider it, though.</p><p>For the first time.</p><p>He’d never signed up to be the Joker—not without coercion, anyway. And now the gatekeepers were going after everyone involved in the beginning of their little experiment, and everyone in the old gang was getting out, if they had any sense.</p><p>“What would I <em>do</em> though?” he mused to the landscape hanging dourly across the wall from the couch, a cloudless afternoon mirroring the one outside the tall tinted windows. There were hidden cameras in the painting, of course, but he wasn’t really talking to Luthor, though the man would surely find it some day in the future, going over old records, cursed by the need to know everything.</p><p>“I could be anything,” he continued. He shuffled cards in front of him, considered doing tricks, but without an audience it fell flat. He leaned forward, collapsing like matchsticks onto the rug, bony knees pressed against his chest, elbows resting on the glass coffee table. He leaned cards against one another, trying to see how high an edifice he could build. “A butler, a baker, a candlestick maker.”</p><p>He pulled the next card—a Joker—and scoffed. “If I’m an archetype, it’s only in my own morbid delusions. I’m a small-time crook, a mentally ill loner, an obsessive.”</p><p>He pulled out the next card—you needed two for each support—and found it was a Jack. “<em>Not</em> funny,” he said. “I’m a genius, an artist, a philosopher.” He leaned them together, put the king on top.</p><p>“A Pagliacci, a Punch and Juliet.” He spoke louder, turning slightly toward the doorway of the living room. “What do you think? I’d make a good butcher, right?”</p><p>“You’re already a butcher,” Lex drawled, stepping into the room. “I hope you have some more serious considerations as well.”</p><p>“You know me, Lex-Lex,” Joker said, leaning back and sweeping his tower down with one hand. “I’m <em>always</em> serious.”</p><hr/><p>Two months later Luthor came in to find his expensive TV trashed. Well, he could always buy another one.</p><p>“If you had that much of a problem with the place, I could have hired an interior decorator,” Luthor said, with a glance around the ruined penthouse. It was, after all, Joker’s wing—or the one he always ended up in, anyway. And the billionaire didn’t seem too miffed.</p><p>“They <em>replaced</em> me,” Joker screeched, wheeling around. “Me! With some… two-bit hack, telling <em>shaggy-dog stories</em>!”</p><p>“And?” Luthor said mildly. “I’ll admit, he’s not particularly humorous, but this only works into your goals.”</p><p>His <em>goals</em>? Joker stepped back, a bitter feeling coating his throat. His fists were clenched so tightly they hurt, and he’d attack Luthor if that wouldn’t end with guns popping out of the walls and Joker falling asleep under some high-powered sedative. He wasn’t in the mood.</p><p>So maybe it <em>did</em> fit into his goals. He could slip away… no one the wiser… <em>no one the wiser</em>! And let this new guy tear his reputation to <em>shreds</em>? Then what would he have <em>left</em>? Who would he <em>be?</em> It just wasn’t… funny…</p><p>“It’s not <em>funny</em>,” Joker said viciously, stalking past Luthor as the man came in and righted a chair, staring down at the slashed leather.</p><p>He looked out the window onto Metropolis. Bright, shining—his for the <em>taking</em>, with Luthor’s help. But he didn’t <em>want</em> it. Not like <em>this</em>. Not if they took even the role he’d played to perfection, created with his whole body, and just <em>handed it over</em>.</p><p>“I was in a freaking <em>helicopter accident</em>!” he said, kicking the bulletproof glass. “And they couldn’t let me <em>die</em> after that? What kind of juggernaut survives that! The Joker should have <em>died</em>!”</p><p>Lex, to his credit, knew when to stay silent, and merely poured himself a drink and sat down.</p><p>“…I take it you’re not staying,” he said, when Joker had trailed off, and his heaving breaths had almost become calm.</p><p>Joker turned around to face him, and leaned against the glass, crossing his arms. “I told you,” he said persuasively, “I don’t <em>want</em> to be Joker anymore. I never <em>did</em> in the first place.”</p><p>“Then don’t be,” Luthor answered implacably.</p><p>Joker sputtered. “I—I— …”</p><p>When, finally, the silence had gone on much too long to be anything but an answer, Lex put down his glass. “I’ll call a car,” he said flatly. To someone who didn’t know him, he would have sounded unmoved; not at all like he’d tasted the dregs.</p><hr/><p>“Just <em>once</em>, I wish the clown would stay dead,” Gordon muttered, puffing away at another cancer stick. It made Joker itch for one, though he’d given it up years ago, before he even started the whole gig. Funny how some things stick with you, like cigarettes, or bad decisions, or crime. “How does he even do it?”</p><p>
  <em>How does he do it, when anyone else who tries the same stunts boils to pieces, like our impostor here who found this acid bath a bit too strong for his liking?</em>
</p><p>Joker, sitting in the back of the police car and overhearing the whole conversation, could have told them it was a brilliant combination of luck, planning, and a cadre of poor dupes enlisted to take the fall in his place (nothing adds to the mythos more than a certain sense of immortality) but no magician gives away trade secrets. Anyway, he sometimes had the sense that that <em>luck</em> part of the equation was just a <em>little</em> too uncanny. Who else would just <em>happen</em> to fall out of the exact window where someone had placed a stack of old mattresses? Or into shark-infested waters, bleeding no less, only to have them swim right on by? Sometimes it was downright weird.</p><p>Sometimes he wondered if the universe was trying to take it up with him for that one fall he’d faked, to give him so many <em>real</em> ones. Anyway. Best not to look at it too closely, he’d found. The Joker could believe whatever he wanted about fate or luck or sharks liking him because their smiles matched, and because he was crazy—here’s the kicker—it <em>still</em> wouldn’t change the fact that they were all just coincidences and there was nothing strange about Gotham at all. It was almost reassuring.</p><p>Batman stared straight through the tinted window of the idling car, as though he could sense some strange shiver down his spine, some indication of the Joker watching them avidly, reading their lips. But perhaps he was only distracted, for surely if he’d really thought that he’d have turned around before he answered. “Sometimes, Jim, I have this feeling that he’ll <em>always</em> come back… like a curse…”</p><p>And Joker found himself unsettled by the haunted look in those blue eyes. He looked away, so he wouldn’t over-see anything else, and hummed a song, loud and cheery, to make the heaviness in the air brighter, to chase away that feeling that something was staring, always staring at him, waiting for his next move.</p><hr/><p>“It’s an effective method for treating fear—” Scarecrow said. “If done <em>properly</em>.” His snide drawl showed just what he thought of Jeremiah Arkham’s ability to do <em>anything</em> ‘properly’.</p><p>Joker, who was sitting on the rocking chair in Crane’s room, listening to the <em>squeak, squeak</em> it made as he made it go even faster, said, “and insulting you? Was that part of his ‘effective method’?”</p><p>He thought he wasn’t imagining the snide tone of stung pride in the self-proclamed Master of Fear’s voice. If this “flooding” technique Arkham had put him through, locking Crane up in a glass-sided room full of crows, had been in any way helpful, it didn’t seem to make the rest any easier to bear. No, it wasn’t the nonconsensual fear experiment, which Crane might have borne, fascinated as he was by the subject, but the <em>disrespect</em> that was the unforgiveable line. Joker had wondered when the professor had been going to act. He thought, perhaps, that Crane hadn’t before now, because somewhere, some part deep inside of him still thought the gatekeepers had enough need for the Supervillains they’d created that they would treat them like valuable assets. All through the overturning of Arkham Asylum, as the fake mental hospital became a real—corrupt and terribly run—one, Crane had stayed fast to that slow-crumbling belief, and the man who’d come out beyond the death of it was sharper and harder. Joker wondered if he was only imagining a brittle look on his face, like something about the doctor had come unmoored.</p><p>Crane chuckled. His hands were clasped firmly behind his back. “That was pure malice, and something I shall make him pay… <em>dearly</em>… for.” His eyes glittered.</p><p>“I’m happy to help,” Joker offered.</p><p>“Thank you,” Crane said, “but I have it well in hand. His downfall is only beginning…”</p><p>“Let me guess,” Joker said. “Slow poisoning? Driving him insane with his greatest fears?”</p><p>“An oldie but goodie,” Crane said, and smiled smugly.</p><hr/><p>The last thing he expected was to see Batman swoop down; he’d just been watching the flying rat on his monitors after all and they placed him on the other side of the building.</p><p>He grinned. “Miss me?” and quickly hid the detonator behind his back.</p><p>Batman stepped forward.</p><p>“Oh, I wouldn’t do <em>that</em> if I were you,” Joker cackled. “Or your precious water supply goes <em>boom</em>!”</p><p>And Batman just tilted his head, staring at him, and Joker <em>started</em> to hear little alarm bells go off; or maybe that was just police sirens down the street, but before he could decide what was wrong he was being slammed backward onto the rooftop and something crashed into his forehead. He blinked, dizzily. Okay. This was… <em>something</em> was wrong here, if he could just put his finger on <em>what</em>—</p><p>“Remember this?” Batman—no, not Batman after all, the voice was wrong, held something in front of his eyes, but he was having trouble focusing. The Batman—fake Batman—sneered. “Of course you don’t.” He pulled off his cowl and for a moment Joker actually couldn’t breathe, at least he thought he couldn’t—</p><p>“Johnny Johnny? What the hell?”</p><p>Slowly, carefully, surreptitiously, the man got rid of his wig and contacts and started looking <em>vaguely</em> familiar and now alarm bells <em>really</em> were going off, but he still couldn’t <em>place</em> the man—</p><p>“I wanted to see if I could infiltrate your gang,” he said, casually, squatting down beside Joker with one hand on the trigger of a gun cocked almost politely under Joker’s chin. “I wanted to see your trust getting betrayed. Tell me, did it work?”</p><p>Joker didn’t answer, but Johnny Johnny’s eyes traveled across him and a slow smile grew on his face. “Oh, it <em>did</em>. Pity you never took the bait, with that ‘wife and child’ thing… I was sure you’d jump on it… but this works too.”</p><p>“Yeah…” Joker cleared his throat. “<em>Who</em> are you again?”</p><p>Johnny Johnny’s eyes grew cold. He held up the thing in his other hand and all of a sudden, just as he spoke, Joker noticed what was printed on the side and…</p><p>“Brick 237,” Jonathan Ryan said.</p><p>“Oh shi—”</p><p>It crashed into his head and everything went dark.</p><hr/><p>He could feel his heart stop. Then he was sliding down, like he was sliding down a kiddie slide or an elevator whose cables had been cut, falling into a room made of a chequerboard pattern in red and black, and Batman stood before him, dressed in purple and yellow and red, like he’d decided to chase the rainbow, and his own face wouldn’t move, a mask-like, permanent, rictus grin no matter what he thought and felt. <em>Tacky</em>, Joker thought, with a far away disgust and then, focusing a moment longer on the pointy-eared freak; <em>he looks… vulnerable</em>…</p><p>It was an uncomfortable feeling. Joker was surprised to find that he didn’t <em>like</em> it. Batman wasn’t <em>supposed</em> to be, and why, after all, were they standing here roles reversed, or as good as, though Joker was holding a straight razor and there was blood a searing point of pain on his tongue so maybe <em>not so much</em></p><p><em>Is that it</em>? He rages. <em>You wanted to understand what it was like to be me?</em><em> Like there was some rabbit hole you could follow me down to understanding…</em></p><p>It wasn’t Batman, just a man dressed as Batman, that tried to kill him. Tripped and fell, poor Ryan—Johnny Johnny— and when Joker finally swam up for air from the darkness, the real Batman was there, and the fake Batman had broken his neck.</p><p><em>Tripped and fell</em>, Batman told him, the words hovering like they were underwater. <em>From fear</em></p><p>And Joker was fairly sure didn’t imagine the whiff of fear toxin on the air, and the figure that stood on the next rooftop over, a gaunt and bent over stick-figure carrying a scythe, surrounded by a halo of dark, flapping wings and claws. If he turned, he might even find a piece of straw.</p><p>Batman should have gone after Crane.</p><p>But here he was, guarding a disoriented Joker who could hardly stand up, let alone run.</p><p>“Good to know,” Joker muttered. “That I don’t have to <em>kill</em> him.” (Should have finished him the first time; should never have left him in a coma—should never have attacked him at <em>all</em>—he didn’t do <em>regret</em>. What’s done is done)</p><p>Batman sighed.</p><p><em>Love really is blind</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His new psychiatrist was a bright young thing that was just the wrong combination of sharp and naïve. Joker knew how it was; he'd been that way, once, himself. She called herself Harley; and her name made him think of harlequins. It was like she was made for him. But. Honestly, he didn't <em>want</em> her.</p><p>It just happened.</p><p>So there he was, telling whatever sob story popped into his head that day because when had any of his doctors ever cared about the <em>truth</em>? And her eyes shining with a sort of fervency he didn't see that often. For some strange reason she liked him. Well, Joker knew just why. She was <em>like</em> him. She wanted to get to the top, and she could see the quickest way to get there.</p><p>He didn't mind. It kept her honest. He'd had a few psychiatrists obsessed with him before. It was useful for a time but it got old. But this girl was something else. Her eyes raked over him like she was eating him but she didn't even seem to notice. Kept it all hiding behind her glasses like it would keep people from seeing her eyes. It probably worked, on most people. She liked to doodle, to daydream. She diagnosed him right off the—heh—<em>bat</em> and then patted herself on the back. Never mind she was wrong; it made a good story and that was what mattered. She was just bright enough to think she was brighter than she was. Just bright enough to be <em>dangerous</em>, if underestimated. It was what got his attention: that dancing between the line.</p><p>Maybe his problem wasn't saying no, after all. Maybe it was that he always wanted whatever seemed like the dumbest option, the one that could hurt him the best.</p><p>Only of course, in the end it came down to not being able to say no after all. He'd got dragged in to Arkham again by Batman; Batman, with his cracks bleeding red and it was <em>beautiful</em>, the most beautiful piece of art he'd ever seen; the King to his Jester, the middle of this merry-go-round of life. And she'd bent over him, crying, like her salt-tears could break the spell of blood.</p><p>So she'd broken him out. And honestly? Even when he <em>poked</em>, and <em>prodded</em>, and <em>cajoled</em>, that was the one thing he hadn't expected; to see her dressed up to match him and furious, burning with life and rage and <em>purpose</em>; to help, to hurt, to make a mark; to pick someone up when they fell the way no one had ever done for her because she'd never let on she'd fallen.</p><p>And somehow he'd fallen too; tripped over his own feet for the second time. He didn't understand how he could be in love with two people at once, like he was trying to tear himself in two, betraying both of them. He had an altar to Batman in his lair, because Batman was his purpose, was the straight man to his act, the god to his groveling worship. Maybe it helped him remember the good days when his mind went down into dark spirals, maybe it just taunted him with grim reminders. He felt weak, washed-up: what had he ever really made of his life, anyway? How could Joker, who was Batman's, only Batman's, promised to him and molded to his every need, how could he turn aside? It didn't make <em>sense</em>! It was almost… heck! It was almost funny!</p><p>If Harley was his wife, Batman was his mistress! Twist ending, wasn't it? <em>He</em> certainly never saw it coming.</p><p>Thing is, she made him remember. Those days before he'd been <em>Joker</em>, before he'd made himself the Clown Prince of Crime. He didn't like it: it made him itch. Made him feel weak and helpless, and he didn't like that. He liked violence: a good old-fashioned BAM! POW! Preferably with him on the receiving end, but he'd dish it too. As long as the hits kept coming. Still, somehow they would end up on the sofa watching old comedy shows, or Harley would try to cook, and fail. Joker would throw back his head, grumble about it; the only thing she could pull off was a <em>sandwich</em>, and only just. So he'd put on his apron, get to work and pretty soon they'd have a three-course meal and somehow she'd pulled out the candles because neither of them knew how to do things by halves.</p><p>There was something to be said for having a romance, or at least pretending to have one. You could hang your hat up, for a bit. Put aside the game, just drift along like every other sucker. Joker couldn't stand it for too long or he'd feel that hollow numbness, that sort of reckless fizzle in his limbs, in his brain, waiting for something to catch, waiting for a fight, for something to come ground him, smash him into the ground, <em>keep him there</em>, to see Batman again. So he was a little obsessed. Nobody's perfect. He didn't know how he'd gotten so invested in the small moments, though: couldn't explain why he spent hours thinking about what to get his girl for her birthday this year, something she'd like. Didn't even know why he hadn't offed her already, at least pushed her away, when she whined and complained and told him in no uncertain terms to take his feet off the coffee table or she was going to smack him, with a towel no less.</p><p>Was this domestic bliss? He should probably hate it. It had just sneaked up on him, the way it must have done for everyone, before they're sitting with their henchgirl in an abandoned warehouse with two hyenas and enough pickets to make a fence.</p><p>Or sitting in a bunch of rucked-up blankets with her moaning his name in a way he knew oh-too-well. Like he gave her that puzzle piece she'd been missing for years, the way Batman gave him his. It wasn't something he could begrudge her. Couldn't even lie to himself—he liked her, he <em>loved</em> her; her bounce, her jaunty courage, the way she was always there. Smooth arms but strong, from years of gymnastics and ticklish feet and yes, he knew her all inside and out. It made a man pretty proud, for a minute there, till he remembered she knew him too. Everything goes both ways. Sometimes he kissed her and thought of Batman; but there were days when all he could see was her, and it felt a little like loss, a little like candy.</p><p>So there she was lying behind him and he could feel the expanse of her breathing against his own skin, in and out, like a rhythm, like the sea off Gotham's harbor under the murky pier, always just out of reach; a little less than you thought it was, and more mysterious.</p><p>"What are thinkin' of, pumpkin pie?" she whispered into his ear, softly, the air caressing him; didn't even ask.</p><p>"Nothing, pudding," he said, automatically; because that's what married couples do; they <em>lie</em> in bed. Probably he should get her a ring, one of these days. It kept slipping his mind.</p><p>He kept wondering what Batman would think, if he saw it. He had two hands, he could wear rings for both of them, but Batman wouldn't see it that way. He was a black-and-white kind of guy. Always stuck in his own make-believe world, and Joker couldn't really blame him, with all the enablers he had around. Hell, Joker would tell him anything if it made him stay; lovesick fool.</p><p>"You can't fool me," Harley said. "You're thinking all sorts of twisty thoughts."</p><p>"Hah!" Joker turned around to face her: the better to stay in the moment; not get too maudlin. She kept him on his toes. "You wouldn't want to know."</p><p>"I want to know everything you're thinking," Harley said. She cloaked it in love but oh it was <em>true</em>; she'd never really stopped wanting to pick him apart, make him hers in every way that mattered, and every way that didn't. Wouldn't stop until there was a Joker-shaped body dissected and pinned under glass.</p><p>"I know you do," he said. "And I <em>know</em> you don't want to know this."</p><p>"Try me," she said, with a little flirty smirk; daring him. So she never knew when to stop: that made two of them.</p><p>"Batman."</p><p>"Ugh!" She turned away, drawing her arms around herself in pricked pride.</p><p>"Told you."</p><p>"Batman, it's always Batman," she muttered.</p><p><em>Not always</em>, Joker thought; but that was the thing; it didn't matter how much he told her <em>not always</em>. She couldn't bear to be shared, and that was the only thing he could do.</p><hr/><p>"So why'd you do it?" Joker asked once, as he and Batman leaned against the old bricks, staring up into a sky the color of pitch.</p><p>"Hm?"</p><p>Joker motioned to the whole costume. "Why a bat?"</p><p>"Why a clown?" Batman countered.</p><p>Joker smiled. "With a face like this? What else could I be?"</p><p>Batman huffed in amusement.</p><p>Finally, he spoke. "I was always afraid of them. Since I was small. I got stuck, once, in a place with bats and," he swallowed. "Well. You know how those things are. Later, one evening—I was already planning, you understand, but I needed a theme, a symbol—I was wondering, searching for some kind of sign. And a bat flew in through my window."</p><p>"Are you sure it wasn't just a coincidence?" Joker asked skeptically.</p><p>"The window was closed," Batman answered. "It dove straight through the glass. Shattered a hole through it, and lay there bleeding on the carpet in front of my feet. It couldn't have been anything but a sign."</p><p>He finished his sentence, and shivered; and Joker shivered too, at a sudden cold breeze racing its way through the alley, before the air subsided to stillness once more. And Joker thought about the clown that had visited him in the dark, that had followed him in symbols and images as long as he could remember.</p><p><em>It's nothing</em>, he told himself. <em>Just the superstitions of two poor, deluded fools</em>.</p><p>It didn't change the fear that snaked its way into his heart.</p><hr/><p>So sometimes he overreacted.</p><p>A lot.</p><p>At least he knew when he'd done <em>wrong</em>, though. He always tried to apologize. And maybe a vase with a rose in it and a little note wasn't the best he could do, but he'd been trying to come up with a better idea for weeks, while he recuperated from a fall from the top of a train into a smokestack below.</p><p>Luckily, there'd been an infestation of giant spiders in that particular warehouse, and they'd been laying their webs through the place, smokestacks and all, for weeks. As he fell, he hadn't had time to appreciate the fact.</p><p>His internal thoughts had been rather simpler than that. More like: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH</p><p>And then he was dive-bombing into a hole, watching the sky swallow up around him, feeling a little bit like Alice jumping after strange leporidae. Stickiness enveloped him. He was drowning in glue, smothered in silk. Crashing down, and bouncing, and breaking his fall and a number of bones into a bargain. Then fighting at least five giant angry spiders that seemed to think he was a particularly unruly piece of food.</p><p>He'd limped over to the Iceberg Lounge and gotten Penguin to give him a room and a doctor, and tried to think up what was an appropriate way to say <em>I'm sorry</em> <em>for throwing you out a window</em>.</p><p>He was sorry for throwing her out the window. Sure, he'd had every <em>reason</em>. But still.</p><p>She always appreciated romantic gestures. And sneaking the note into Arkham would be a hilarious way to reveal to the world that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.</p><p>Because it wasn't Harley's style to let on she held a grudge till she was good and ready, it wasn't until two months later, in the sweltering heat of a ratty apartment with no air conditioning, on a lazy afternoon, that she said, "Hey, Mistah J?"</p><p>"Yeah?" Joker asked distractedly. They didn't have a TV in here, but if he sat on top of the dresser and looked out the postage-stamp window, he could just make out what the neighbours were watching, at least the visuals, though the audio was just a jumbled mutter of noise and faded music. It put a bit of a crick into his neck, but there really wasn't anything else to do. He passed the chips back to Harley, who munched on one, scooching up closer behind him. Neither had bothered to put on clothes; though Joker was wearing his boxers.</p><p>"Oh, wow!" Harley said, distracted, for a moment, by the screen. Then, as the ads came on, she swung her legs and sighed.</p><p>"You told me a big pile of bull, didn't you puddin'," she said at last.</p><p>"When?" Joker asked, stealing the chips back.</p><p>Harley crossed her arms and glared at him. "All those sob-stories you told me in Arkham. Like your 'abusive father'. Oh yeah, Batman told me all about it."</p><p>"Er…" Joker shrugged. "They could be true?" he offered, with a hopeful smile. Her eyes narrowed further, and he quailed.</p><p>"Makes sense, I guess," she said. "We psychiatrists just eat that up don't we."</p><p>"Well it is more exciting," Joker agreed.</p><p>She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting the balls of her feet against the top of the dresser, her toes curled across the edge. They still had bandages, both of them, and bruises that hadn't yet faded from their various falls. (When she'd seen him the day he'd burst in to rescue her she'd only raised an eyebrow. "Tryina match me, Mistah J?" she'd asked.</p><p>"I thought it was only fair," he'd replied.)</p><p>"Were you ever gonna tell me the truth?" Harley continued, inexorably. Joker shifted. He couldn't meet her eyes.</p><p>"Erm…"</p><p>"Yeah," Harley continued. "I thought so."</p><p>"Why does it matter?" Joker snapped irritably. They were missing the next section of the show, but he didn't dare turn away from her now. "It's in the past."</p><p>"Yeah," Harley said, her voice growing softer. "<em>Your</em> past, mistah J." She reached out, lay one hand on his knee. "Tell me," she said. And it wasn't a request.</p><p>"He was fine," Joker said flatly. "Frequently depressed, but he never laid a hand on me or ma. The worst that could be said for him was that he killed himself when I was twelve. Are you going to ask me how that makes me feel, <em>doctor</em>?"</p><p>"I don't need ta," Harley said. "It's perfectly clear it makes you angry."</p><p>"I'd kill 'im if he wasn't dead already," Joker said, though he wasn't sure he meant it. "Of course it makes me angry. I was a kid. It was his job to protect me, but he was a damn coward and he left us alone. There. Chew on that." He threw the chips back to her and crossed his arms sullenly. "Does it hold up, or will you have to edit it for your rabid audience?"</p><p>Harley looked inside the bag. There were only crumbs left, but she emptied them into her mouth. "What audience," she said, gesturing to the single empty room; the icebox shoved into the open doorway between the toilet and sink and the cramped space that held everything they currently owned, shoved haphazardly against the wall, spilling over onto their pile of mattresses. "You think anyone's gonna listen to a disgraced former therapist escaped from a madhouse with the man she was tryin'a cure?"</p><p>"It's your own damn fault," Joker said bitterly. "I never asked you to."</p><p>"I never said you did," Harley returned, crumpling the bag and throwing it toward the wastebasket. It missed, and bounced forlornly to a stop on the bed below.</p><p>"But you'll blame me anyway," Joker said.</p><p>"…I need ta piss," Harley said, after a too-long moment. She swung herself into a front-flip all the way from the dresser to the bed, jumping over the icebox in one movement and shoving the curtain closed behind her. But she didn't even bother pretending to flush the toilet or turn on the sink like she was washing her hands. Just stayed in there till even the neighbours got tired of watching re-runs, and turned off the screen.</p><hr/><p>Joker spent weeks setting everything up. The right warehouse with a river view not particularly obstructed by barges, the black tablecloth, the candles. They'd never really had a proper date before, and he didn't know what to expect, but it felt necessary to remember the day somehow, to make it special.</p><p>He'd cut out little bats and clowns from construction paper and hung it overhead, carefully out of reach of the flames, and worried for ages what to <em>make</em>because, he realized, he'd never once seen Batman eat. He settled on dessert. Not too presumptuous, and surely everyone liked dessert. He made crème brûlée, for it seemed more Batman's style than anything else. Simple. Classy. A bit burnt.</p><p>He blew a noisemaker when Batman arrived, standing stock-still and looking around as though spooked. "Surprise!"</p><p>"It's not my birthday," Batman said at last.</p><p>"Of course it's not, it's our anniversary," Joker said, a little annoyed that Batman was playing coy.</p><p>"Our… what."</p><p>"When we <em>met</em>. Remember? Or have too many <em>knocks on the head</em> gotten to you?" Joker said testily.</p><p>"I need to take you back to Arkham," Batman said, circling the table, looking at it warily. Joker bristled.</p><p>"Not until you <em>celebrate</em>," he said. "Properly. Or the hostages will have something very <em>unfortunate</em> happen to them, and we don't want that, do we."</p><p>Batman sat down at his spot with something like a sigh.</p><p>It wasn't anything like how Joker had imagined. He'd thought they'd have <em>fun</em>—he'd never failed to have fun with Batman <em>before</em>, no matter the situation, and here they had free reign to enjoy each other's company for as long as they needed. But somehow, nothing was right. He twitched, as Batman stabbed his spoon carefully into the crème brûlée and looked at it forbiddingly.</p><p>"I—" Joker tried to explain. "I didn't know what you'd like."</p><p>"It's fine," Batman said, shortly.</p><p>"So," Joker said, with forced cheer. "How are things? Good? I hope they're good; you don't get enough of a break, but at least the weather's nice isn't it?"</p><p>"Yes," Batman said.</p><p>Joker stopped rambling, wondering what Batman had actually said <em>yes</em> to, but decided against asking for clarification. "Oh! Good. That's… wonderful. Um." He cleared his throat and ate a piece of his own dessert, staring at Batman. "I really liked surfboarding against you. I had to say. You don't look the type but you're remarkably good at it. …I had fun."</p><p>"What's this all about, Joker," Batman said at last, putting his spoon down carefully. "<em>Really</em> about. This all," he gestured at everything around them, "it isn't like you."</p><p>Joker opened his mouth. "Huh?" He blinked. "But it's not about anything!"</p><p>Batman narrowed his eyes.</p><p>"It's <em>not</em>!" Joker said. "I told you—pinky swear!" he held out his finger, "no plots and plans! I just thought… it might be nice to have a… a real date, for once. Wouldn't it? Or…" something deep and uncomfortable seemed to squirm in his belly, and he felt like he wanted to sink into the ground. "Or is that not your thing. You don't like it. You never <em>said</em>."</p><p>"You never <em>asked</em>," Batman retorted.</p><p>"Oh," Joker said. He looked down at the table through a haze of tears. All the decorations he'd spent ages putting together—the bouquet of daisies, the little mouse sculls, the Halloween-themed glitter with pumpkins and bats—seemed all of a sudden desperate and trite. "I just… I just wanted this to be<em>special</em>."</p><p>Batman seemed uncomfortable. "Honestly… Joker… you didn't need to go to all this trouble. It's not that I don't appreciate it…"</p><p>Joker shook his head. "Please don't lie to spare my feelings, Batman," he said. "You don't like it at all—that much is perfectly clear." He stood up and picked up the whole tablecloth, sending everything crashing to the floor. Batman jumped.</p><p>"Joker, that wasn't necessary," he said.</p><p>"There's only two options," Joker said calmly. "One, you can walk away and we can both pretend this never happened and spare ourselves the embarrassment. Two, we can get drunk. I'll tell you now, I'd prefer the second option but either will do." He walked over to the piles of crates, blankets, and other miscellany in the corner of the wide, empty room, finally pulling out a collection of bottles with a triumphant, "Ta-da!"</p><p>"I really don't think we should be drinking," Batman said.</p><p>"Then leave," Joker said, uncorking the bottle. "Nothing's keeping you."</p><p>"The hostages—" Batman pointed out.</p><p>"Pfft. They'll be fine. A little discomfort never killed anyone. It's good for character. Want some?" he handed the bottle to Batman, who took it gingerly.</p><p>At last, Batman took a sip and handed it back. "Not bad," he said.</p><p>"I should hope so," Joker muttered. "I traded a whole crate of guns for this stuff."</p><p>As Joker had suspected, a few more drinks and everything had gotten much pleasanter. Batman had joined Joker on the pile of blankets, and was listening intently to Joker's rambling explanation of how to properly defuse a bomb when he interrupted, "I'm sorry I never said."</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"I'm sorry I never said. I don't like… dating. I've had to suffer through it so much, I guess I never expected you would… you never seemed the type. I didn't think you even <em>liked</em> guys," Batman said. He paused, probably processing the actual dumbness of that statement, and winced. "That is to say, you never tried—you never <em>did</em> anything… not with me or…" he rambled to an embarrassed halt.</p><p>"I don't," Joker said. "I mean; I do. I just don't like anyone. I don't like <em>kissing</em> anyone, I mean. I don't like <em>f</em>—<em>uh?</em>"</p><p>"I think I get it," Batman said, kindly; he took Joker's hands, which had been trying, confusedly, to mime his words, and Joker stared down at… Batman,<em>holding his hands</em>.</p><p>"Wow," Joker said. "So…" he cleared his throat. "Yeah. But. I like you, Batman. Wait, here, listen—" he got up unsteadily, pushed a few more crates and boxes aside to reveal a record player and picked out a record, staring at it for a moment before remembering to put the needle down.</p><p>The song started to play, a classic tune, sweet and soft, and Joker sang with it. "<em>You're my personal possession, you're mine alone… You're my personal possession, my very own</em>… this describes us <em>exactly</em>, Batman. You see?"</p><p>"Is that supposed to be romantic?" Batman asked.</p><p>"Hush. It <em>is</em> romantic. Where was I?" Joker cleared his throat, and continued to sing as he twirled his way around the caped crusader, stumbling on blankets as he did, finally sprawling in Batman's lap as he warbled, "and nobody must <em>dream</em> of you but me, and nobody else must <em>love</em> you but me!"</p><p>"Joker," Batman said. "I really don't have time for this."</p><p>Joker stopped singing and looked at him. "You don't have <em>time</em> for this," he said flatly. "On our anniversary."</p><p>"I…" Batman started, but didn't continue.</p><p>"You're my personal possession," Joker sang, softly, drawing one gloved hand down the side of Batman's jaw, "that's what you are… you're my <em>magnificent</em>obsession, my lucky star." He leaned his head against Batman's chest, feeling the <em>thud</em>, <em>thud</em>, <em>thud</em> that told him Batman was alive. "I own you exclusively," he sang, "darling… you belong to me… You're my personal possession, my precious love."</p><p>The song ended, and there was quiet for a moment. Joker felt his eyes slipping closed, feeling very sleepy. He could, he thought, sleep like this and be perfectly happy, perfectly content. Perhaps here, of all places, he would even escape from nightmares.</p><p>"Do you?" Batman said. Joker opened his eyes, staring at Batman quizzically. Batman seemed to realize it needed explanation, for after swallowing he continued, "do you really <em>believe</em> that?"</p><p>"What? That you're mine?" Joker said. "Aren't you?"</p><p>Batman just shook his head, looking lost and frustrated, and Joker didn't know what was wrong. "You <em>are</em> mine," he said at last, a little uncertainly. "You never said you weren't."</p><p>"That's not… that's not what I meant, Joker. It's just that sometimes you scare me."</p><p>"Of course I do," Joker said, logically. "I'm a clown!"</p><p>Batman carded one hand through Joker's unruly green hair. "Never mind, Joker. It's fine." He smiled at Joker, but there was something wrong with the smile; and it followed Joker into his dreams, haunting him, like an ache.</p><hr/><p>He hadn't meant to lie to her. Not like that. Only thing was, there they were, having broken out and on the down-low, and wouldn't you know the formula just wears off, after years of sticking it through. One moment he's the grinning ghoul, the next he's mister ordinary-looking again. He can practically hear the smack Harley's mouth makes as it hits her chest.</p><p>Right. About that <em>fallen into a vat of acid</em> thing? It was a lie.</p><p>He couldn't tell her that. Because then he'd have to explain why he'd done it; and once he'd done that he'd have to give up the whole scheme; explain how he'd been such a sucker, manipulated by the system, bossed around by the people who ran Arkham. He was already on shaky enough ground with her, he couldn't bear to see her look at him with <em>contempt</em>.</p><p>So he'd stared at her, and she'd stared at him, and you could've heard a pin drop.</p><p>And then he had the idea. (Sorry, Harvey, never meant to steal your shtick but here goes—) "Harley? Whh… what happened?" He put his hand to his head, like he was confused. "Where are we? I mean… wait, I know this place, don't I? But I don't know…"</p><p>"Mister J?" Harley asked, a little apprehensive. Then, with suddenly renewed vigour; sensing prey. <em>Bingo</em>. "Joker? You okay?"</p><p>"I'm not Joker," Joker—no, no, get in the mindset—<em>Jack</em> said. It had been years since he'd used that name. He'd grown out of it, and it was like trying on an old pair of shoes and finding it pinched his toes.</p><p>"Is that right?" she was calm, analyzing, right in the middle of psychiatrist mode. It was amazing how quickly she dropped the act of caring. "And what should I call you, then?"</p><p>"My name's Jack Napier, and I think…" he hesitated, swayed a little on his feet. "Excuse me. I think I'm gonna throw up."</p><hr/><p>It was funny how quickly Harley professed to love Jack. If he weren't pretending not to be himself he could've pointed out she'd never said the words to him before. Hell, neither of them had: he figured they'd had an understanding. But now she said it like she was about to tighten the chains, like she was waiting to see if he still had all his faculties, his instincts. And oh, he knew what he <em>should</em> do, but he'd jumped headfirst into this most monumental of all bad ideas and he couldn't back out. So he let her lead him around, and show him the city, and make nice, and talk about getting a real job, going back into society, because somehow she'd gotten the idea that this Jack fellow was nice and manageable and <em>not insane</em>. And it was pretty stunning how soon she seemed to forget that she'd fallen in love with the Joker, with every bad pun and lousy quip and near-death experience and wild chase.</p><p><em>Is this what love is like?</em> Jack thought. <em>They say it's blind, but this is a doozy!</em> He suddenly worried over what would happen if Batman one day just gave up the whole mad crusade, the whole play-acting routine, and decided to hang up the cowl. Surely he wouldn't say, to whatever lurked underneath, <em>I always knew this was the real you</em>! As if nothing they'd ever done in their lives, ever said that they were, ever even mattered. There was a joke, and then there was just a <em>tragedy</em>.</p><p><em>Always thought they were the same thing</em>, Jack thought. <em>Joker did, at least</em>. Maybe this new fellow—this guy he was pretending to be—felt differently. Or maybe he'd been getting over his manic phase and was about to plunge into the dumps again. Harley usually managed to notice, but this time she thought he was a completely different guy.</p><p>"And… what if I'm not cured?" he said, once. She gave him this side-long look, and he laughed nervously; stopped himself. Laughing, that wasn't Jack's thing. It couldn't be. Problem was he'd put his whole personality into the Joker: fun loving maniac, penchant for magic tricks, flamboyant attitude. Laughing too much. He was having a hard time thinking up what to fill up the spaces with, when all that was off the table. "I just mean… I don't think an acid bath just <em>wears off</em>. What if the Joker comes back?"</p><p><em>He'd better,</em> Jack thought. <em>I'm sick to death of this farce. I don't think I can take another minute of it</em>. It felt like being a kid again, just floating along with everyone else, keeping his head down, trying not to be noticed. Like it didn't matter if he was getting strangled; everyone else did it too.</p><p>She bit her lip. "Jack…" she reached across the table in that small café where they'd sat by the window and Jack had had to stop himself from ordering Joker's favorite in case it put a crack in the whole ruse; stuck to plain black coffee because it reminded him of Batman, which at least put a smile on his face. The day, though cold and winter-crisp, was bright and sunny and just the sort of thing that needed a big explosion to get everyone's adrenaline pumping, and here they were stuck on a date: not even the <em>good</em> kind, because Harley was so, so <em>careful</em> with Jack. "You can't think that way. You gotta tell yourself it's over."</p><p>"But…" Jack looked down, down into his black coffee and pulled his hand away to take a sip; helping him hide his expression of moroseness. <em>But I don't want it to end. Damn it, why did the formula have to run out now, when I don't have any supplies, can't even make any more?</em> He needed to get access to one of the other villain's lairs, or a lab—any lab would do. He could walk into the nearest hospital and whip the thing up in four hours. But not with Harley looking at him like he was made of glass, following his every movement. "You're right," he said, with a grin, finally looking at her again. "You're right, I shouldn't worry too much. Take advantage of what I have, right?"</p><p>He knew how to play a long con, if he needed to. And all he needed was to stick this out until she dropped her guard.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This was Jack, then: he dressed as nice as he could afford, but conservatively. Had that indefinable aura of menace, without the camp; colorless, bar a flashy tie or two. Reminded himself a little of a gangster, of those bad old days when he'd been the sucker. In other words: <em>boring</em>.</p><p>And he was spiraling down fast. Everything seemed more and more utterly horrible to him by the day, and Harley still clung to his arm like a disgusting limpet. He hadn't had a moment's peace from her since he'd turned into Jack, and he still hadn't found a way to synthesize the drug again. He'd started up a few crayon-covered pages of notes but stopped in frustration at the real <em>pointlessness</em> of it all. He wanted Batman. No: he wanted to <em>kill</em> Batman, and pronto. Where was that pointy-eared freak when you needed him?</p><p>He wanted to take Harley's cute little arms and run them through a meat shredder, just so she'd stop <em>touching him</em>. He'd always thought her voice was grating, but the look in her eyes was worse. He was fairly certain by now that she'd never really loved him at all. What could he expect from a psychiatrist who had, by her own admission, only wanted to take advantage of him to write a tell-all?</p><p>Sure, she'd followed that up by saying that she'd quickly realized how irresistible he was, but that was the thing: Harley would tell him <em>anything</em> to keep him there. She was probably writing it even now, and someday he'd wake up and she'd be gone and all those notes she thought he didn't notice her taking, observing him, clinically, would be gone with her.</p><p>He could only keep one thing in mind, and that was that she could <em>never</em> find out about his lie. He was afraid of what she would do if she knew. But he couldn't keep it up. All his grand plans were narrowing down like a funnel of air and sound, like he could see the train coming down the tracks toward him and it had his name on it. He finally asked her to go to the store.</p><p>Nonchalantly. Like it didn't matter.</p><p>He couldn't even believe she'd buy something so dumb—unless she was only pretending to. But she left; he could hear the tapping of her feet away beyond the door where he leaned against it and tried to drag that train onto the track of <em>logical thought</em>, onto anything other than the knowledge of his impending demise.</p><p>He had to leave. Had to <em>get out</em>, just get away from <em>everything</em>. So he took off and ran. It didn't last more than five minutes before he was shaking and sliding down the wall of an alley, and he knew it hadn't been enough. Harley was <em>good</em>, and he hadn't gotten far. She'd find him and that would be it. He'd have to kill her. It was a pleasant enough thought, at least, to last him a few agonizing minutes—or maybe longer, he couldn't tell—</p><p>He found out later that the store had ended up part of an altercation. Harley'd been taken in by the police, though all she'd done was walk into the wrong place at the wrong time. He'd crawled back to a bolt-hole she'd never heard of and survived on cans of beans and what seemed like pure lethargy, and lay in bed trying to make everything go away. Not hard to do, when the whole place was underground with no windows to speak of. Just the place to bury oneself alive.</p><hr/><p>What a day to be alive!</p><p>Even in the depths of the city spring seemed to change the texture of the air, carrying with it a hint of green. The ever-present smog tasted like the oil-stained sea and even the rain beat out a jaunty rhythm.</p><p>Jack walked along the pier, whistling. It was an odd experience, blending into the crowd like this! He'd almost forgotten what it was like. He used to hate it, but it struck him as funny now—none of these people living their sad little lives even glanced twice at him, none of them even knew that the <em>Joker</em> was walking right through their midst. He was going to have to synthesize that drug again, if he wanted to start up the act once more, and he'd had such<em>wonderful</em> new ideas that would really put the Bat's knickers in a twist. But why do only that, when he could case a few joints, build a Jokermobile, and learn to play the kazoo? If only he had as many hands as an octopus! That would be something to ask Ivy about. If she could get her plants to do things for her, surely he could make a few extra appendages for himself. That is, if Ivy would deign to talk to him. For some reason she never found his sense of humor appealing. He called it a crying shame.</p><p>Oh well. Maybe he'd just have to train an octopus to do his bidding. He'd done it with a monkey once, it couldn't be <em>that</em> hard.</p><hr/><p>"Are you really all right?"</p><p>"I told you, <em>yes</em>, stop worrying."</p><p>"I just don't want to hurt you," Batman said quietly. Joker could see that little-boy-lost look creep into his expression, that bewildered guilt, like he didn't know what he was doing and why, couldn't even rationalize it. He couldn't let it get out of hand, knew what the Bat was like when he went all broody. Didn't want to ruin their fun.</p><p>Joker chuckled a little, though the air raked across his throat; the shop around them was properly trashed, thankfully, so Joker could put that one out of mind; a puddle of vomit on the floor mixed with the bubbles Batman had forced down his throat. He'd thought maybe he'd look like bubbles inside, too, like maybe he'd float, but it really only made him feel a bit ill. Ah well.</p><p>"Yes you do," he said bluntly. "And why should I care? I want to hurt you too!" He spread his arms wide, persuasively. "If we're both in agreement, who cares about anything else? <em>I</em> never told you to end the scene."</p><p>Batman's frown only got more drawn in, his brow furrowing. "It's not a game," he said, softly, sounding pained. Perhaps he felt that excuse wearing thin, even for himself.</p><p>"Listen," Joker said. "If it makes you feel any better, I give you my consent, in perpetuity, to choke me as much as your little bat-heart desires, as long as you stop <em>feeling so sorry for yourself</em>!" He ended on a snarl.</p><p>Somehow this only increased Batman's pathetic aura of woe. "You can't <em>do</em> that," he said.</p><p>"Says who?"</p><p>"You're not in your right mind," Batman said, "obviously. It's my responsibility to make sure you don't… that I…" he faltered.</p><p>"Oh get a grip," Joker said bitterly. "You have a <em>massive</em> guilt-complex, you know that? I'll tell you a secret: the one thing I hate most of all is a hypocrite, and you're <em>really</em> testing my patience right now. You can't play the game with me and then refuse to admit I know the rules as well as anyone." He turned aside, abruptly. "I'm tired of this. Take me back to Arkham, now, if you would. At least there the madness is honest."</p><p>"I'm sorry," Batman said softly, but he didn't say anything else. Didn't even try to make it right.</p><hr/><p>For someone who was known for making scenes, Joker could sink into the background when it suited him, and no one else would put his quiet moments together into any kind of a plan. Harvey Dent, former DA turned successful mobster after Maroni threw a vial of vitriol in his face—and wasn't <em>that</em> an irony—would never shut up about law, just as Two-Face would never shut up about his plans. He was one of the second wave, he took the gig <em>seriously</em>, and Joker had to admit it cracked him up. Two-Face bored him. Besides being able to rile the man with zero effort, there wasn't much to recommend him. Harvey, however, was a decent conversationalist who appreciated Joker's complaints about the system and would help him come up with plans to figure out how to make things <em>better</em>. He cared about <em>justice</em>, and <em>truth</em>, and all that dross. Funny thing was, Joker understood. He understood the <em>frustration</em>, the<em>anger</em>, even if the end game didn't inspire him. All he wanted was a little leveling of the playing field, and surely that couldn't be too much to ask for.</p><p>Harvey's only visitor, besides his wife, was his old friend Billionaire Bruce Wayne. The man came by a few times when Joker had popped into Harvey's cell, and with a quick <em>shh!</em> and finger to his lips, he slid down and watched, eyes glittering, from the shadows under the bed.</p><p>Bruce had a restlessness to him, a man who was made to take up space, but hated it; he had an air of apologetic guilt hardwired into his DNA. He was solidly built and mostly muscle, with scars all over his exposed hands and wrists and neck. "Hi, Harvey," he said, quietly.</p><p>"Hi, Bruce."</p><p>There was a long silence, so palpably awkward that Joker had to concentrate to keep from whistling to fill it.</p><p>Bruce sat down upon the chair Joker'd been in only a few seconds prior. He sat still, entirely and unnaturally still, as though he were made of stone, his big hands clenched uncomfortably, resting on his thighs, his blue eyes sad. Only the blinking of his eyelids betrayed him; his breath was as even as a metronome.</p><p>"How are you doing?" Harvey asked at last.</p><p>"Okay," Bruce said. He drew in a harsh breath and looked down. Shifted, for the first time, and slumped his shoulders. "Not great."</p><p>"I'm sorry," Harvey said.</p><p>Joker felt the overwhelming urge to laugh, and bit his arm till it drew blood, just to keep his silence. This was probably the most painfully awkward scene he'd ever witnessed, and the weirdest to boot. You'd've thought the one <em>in</em> the asylum might be the one asked after. But Harvey was in one of his good moods, and seemed strong as anything. <em>Bruce</em>, though, Bruce! He was stone, yes, and he had the cracks to prove it. He was like a little boy; like he'd never grown up after his parents died. Probably he never had.</p><p>It was sad, and suddenly Joker's urge to laugh left him, and he only felt depressed. He hugged his knees to his chest and tried to ignore the long, empty stretches of conversation, and the expanding sadness that seemed to envelop Wayne, like a cloud of particulate matter drifting into the container of space.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Then the kid came along.</p><p>He was like Batman’s younger twin; the same brooding scowl, the same too-harsh fighting style that cared not for broken ribs or fractured spines, but where Batman was scared, always afraid of crossing some line that existed only in his imagination, the kid was sharp. His eyes were thoughtful, took in everything; his anger was proud and without apology. He was Batman as he <em>could</em> have been, if the world had only been a little kinder to him, if some slow torture hadn’t worn him down to the bone. A kid too old for his years and a man stuck in childhood, and somehow it <em>worked</em>; they helped each other. They were a team, a dynamic duo: Batman and Robin.</p><p>They would fight together against their enemies, they would have screaming fights amongst themselves, they would sit together on the edges of rooftops, eating chili dogs. They made each other <em>smile</em>.</p><p>It hurt.</p><p>It was like someone shoving knives into his throat, every time Joker saw that smile on Batman’s face. It wasn’t <em>lightness</em>, because Batman was never light. It wasn’t even <em>happiness</em>, because Batman was allergic to the notion. No, it was something much more pervasive: it was <em>contentment</em>. It was <em>responsibility</em>. Batman was <em>growing up</em>, and leaving Joker behind, like a toy shoved into the back of a closet. It was an outcome that became ever grimmer and clearer with every time they fought.</p><p>With the kid around, Batman reconsidered what it meant to <em>go too far</em>, as though seeing a mirror of his own actions was enough to give him pause. It didn’t matter how much Joker taunted or cajoled, he’d be summarily handcuffed and taken to Arkham without a bit of rough play in between, and that <em>smile</em>, that damned smile that seemed to exist only to break his heart was flaunted before him like Joker wasn’t even there.</p><p>The property demolition went down, for something in Batman’s one-track funnel of a brain seemed to shift enough to come up with solutions that didn’t involve destruction. The gatekeepers left ominous <em>hints</em> that <em>something</em> had to be done.</p><p>Joker could see the end of Supervillain Initiative, whenever those old farts next got together and looked at their cost-benefit analyses. And with that, went everything: his freedom, his very <em>self</em> as the Joker. And <em>Batman</em>, who so cavalierly flirted with bringing everything tumbling down, no longer seemed to even see him at all.</p><p>There Joker was, in the back of the car, feeling trapped for the first time in a long time, while Robin turned on the radio.</p><p>
  <em>“We had to part…”</em>
</p><p>Joker looked out the window to have something else to look at than Batman and Robin, at the megawatt grin that the youth was bearing, so he couldn’t see the bright colors, red, and yellow, that seemed to call even a shade of sunny-day blue from Batman’s workmanlike costume.</p><p>
  <em>“The moment you had touched my heart…”</em>
</p><p>“Good job, chum,” Batman said, quietly, with a softness in his voice that Joker had never heard before.</p><p>The dilapidated buildings, all that remained of Gotham’s glory days, now just a sordid money-making scheme, washed by. Outside the dust and grime that spattered the edge of the Batmobile’s windows, like a wave of brown rubble in their wake, the pennants of the old typewriter companies and novelty museums still advertised to an audience that had left long ago. Joker wanted to cover his ears, just so he didn’t have to hear it, so he couldn’t feel the shards of his heart solidifying, turning to anger in his chest, but the cuffs stopped him, and all he could do was bury his head in his arms and try to pretend.</p><p>
  <em>“…And with you went my dream,<br/>all too soon.”</em>
</p><p>/</p><p>Batman had become known, somehow, outside the self-immolating vortex that was Gotham. A man known as Bane made it his sworn mission to destroy the Bat. Joker was unconvinced. He’d heard it before; Gotham would do what it always did with upstarts. Chew them into pieces, digest them in its rambling streets. Maybe, if they survived, they’d be reborn into something Gotham could stand, something that fit within the rules of the theater, the performance being played. Joker was an old-timer, and he knew every move and measure. He’d seen it happen time and time again, a sort of cyclicality that was enough to drive the sane to madness, and the mad even madder.</p><p>Crane was out on business, and Harvey was Two-Face, so the only person of any note to listen to was Mad Hatter. The good thing about Tetch, in Joker’s opinion, was that he was terrified of Joker, and right now he needed to see someone cower. Don’t let anyone say he never looked after his mental health.</p><p>They sat in the cafeteria, with tall, mullioned windows letting in only the ghost of light through a pea-soup fog; around there was the usual chatter and screaming and the ever-continuous clink of spoons against bowls.</p><p>“And Batman’s been ignoring me,” Joker ranted, “just left me behind for that wretched Robin!”</p><p>Jervis nodded timidly.</p><p>“You know how to make people do what you want, Tetch,” Joker said at last. “Do you think I could get one of your cards up his cowl?”</p><p>Jervis rocked back and forth, chewing his lip. “I wouldn’t recommend it, not at all,” he said.</p><p>“What do you <em>mean</em>,” Joker growled, throwing his arms wide in exasperation. “Haven’t you <em>heard</em> anything I’ve been telling you?”</p><p>“I did,” Tetch said, measuredly. “But the people under my control don’t behave like people, you know. They’re chess pieces. Very orderly; quite unlike themselves. You wouldn’t like him that way, for he wouldn’t be your Batman, only something that looked like him. You’d have more luck asking Ivy for a plant-clone.”</p><p>“Like she’d ever do a <em>thing</em> for me,” Joker grumbled. He pushed aside his Arkham-issued gruel; he wasn’t hungry. Rarely was, when it was Arkham food to speak of, but less since this had happened. His worry ran circles in his head, using his poor battered brain as a hamster wheel. If he could only get the hamster out, maybe everything would go back to normal. He slumped down, resting his head on the table and closed his eyes.</p><p>“If you’re not having that, may I?” Tetch asked.</p><p>Joker blinked his eyes open blearily, confused, before following the Hatter’s gesture to his abandoned food.</p><p>“Be my guest,” Joker said. He closed his eyes again.</p><p>/</p><p>Joker and Crane teamed up for a bit of good-old-fashioned mayhem, kidnapping the mayor and holing up in the sewer, trying to avoid Croc, waiting for Batman to come. That was the problem with any scheme, even the ones designed to take his mind off Batman: they all came <em>back</em> to him. And there he came, with that bright-clad figure in his wake. With hardly even a few broken pipes to show for it, the mayor was rescued, and Scarecrow sprayed his gas behind them as the two fled; it missed Batman and hit the boy, who stopped with a face suddenly ashen-grey, swaying on his feet. He didn’t scream. He just seemed to <em>crumble</em>; his feet falling from under him, and Batman turned away from the chase to catch the sweating youth, whose eyes roamed the darkness seeing something else, longer ago.</p><p>“Are you all right? Robin… Robin…”</p><p>That voice echoed through the tunnels, taunting their successful escape; and by the time they had gotten back to their safe-house Joker was trembling with rage.</p><p>Crane, whose sense of self-preservation was always a bit lacking, didn’t seem to notice. He slumped down onto one of the crooked old chairs and sighed. “What a complete waste of time,” he said.</p><p>“Yeah, pal?” Joker asked. “And whose fault was <em>that</em>? If we’d waited a little longer, we could’ve got the ransom without Batman even—” he fell silent, unable to continue, the force of some trembling wave of emotion was so great, stringing its way through his entire body until he felt like he wanted to kill something. But the only <em>something</em> in the room was Scarecrow. Joker took a deep breath, stuck his hands in his pockets, and was on his way out of the room, to some other level of the building where he could trash the place as much as he wanted without consequence, when Crane answered.</p><p>“Have you forgotten, the whole point was that Batman would ‘ruin’ our plan? I admit, getting to test my newest concoction was a bonus, but if anyone let down his end of the deal it was Batman. We’re on thin ice with <em>them</em> right now, and you know it.”</p><p>“Stop,” Joker said tightly, his shoulders tensing. “Stop.”</p><p>“You told me your plan was foolproof—that we’d have a good amount of destruction to show for it!” Crane’s voice was rising higher in anger, and he was standing when Joker turned around.</p><p>“So I messed up!” Joker said. “It <em>should</em> have worked, it <em>would</em> have worked if it weren’t for Robin. And who brought me into this, huh, Crane? Feeling confident now? Did this all turn out like you <em>expected</em> it to? How are either of us going to live any kind of life when this all falls to pieces, when we have a rap sheet this long on our hands?”</p><p>“I shouldn’t think that would be a problem for <em>you</em>, Jack,” Crane said condescendingly.</p><p>It was a mistake. With one stride Joker was barreling forward. Crane seemed to realize he’d gone too far, and put his hand out, pressing the trigger on the gas-release at his wrists. The mixture filled the air between them, and Joker stopped short, breathing it in. Then he put his head in his hands.</p><p>The <em>fool</em>. He didn’t know.</p><p>“Now,” Crane said, inching backward, “I think perhaps I’ll leave this conversation for another time…”</p><p>Joker’s shoulders were shaking.</p><p>Finally, he peeked out from behind his hands, and Scarecrow flinched to see his thin-lipped smile; his suppressed laughter. “Not bad, ‘Crow. What other flavors you got?”</p><p>“But…” Crane stammered. “I don’t understand…”</p><p>“Of course you don’t,” Joker snarled. “Thought you could strip me to my deepest fears, the way you always used to with poor, dear, <em>Jack</em>?”</p><p>Crane stumbled back, past the wooden chair, which Joker grabbed with both hands, raising it above his head. Crane was so shocked he didn’t even think to run before Joker brought the chair crashing down on him, again and again, grinning manically. “Loser! Charlatan!” It was everything he’d ever wanted to say or do to Crane, the kind of power over the always-suave doctor he’d craved.</p><p>Crane, of course, wouldn’t know that Joker had made his serum to have all sorts of interesting effects, that one of them was an immunity to Crane’s toxin, along with so many other poisons. Joker was a fair hand at chemistry, he’d been good at it all his life and kept it up, having access in Arkham to any kind of books or equipment his heart desired.</p><p>When the doctor was at last only a whimpering mess on the floor, too cowed to even think of fighting back, Joker let the remains of the now-broken chair fall from his hands; it hit the ground with a dull, ringing thud.</p><p>“How tiresome our friendship has become,” Joker said flatly. It was nothing more or less than the truth.</p><p>He felt finished with Crane; finished with it all. He turned around and left, walked into the streets, harsh and bright under the noonday sun, walked until he’d gotten back to Arkham.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harley sat on the edge of his bed, legs crossed, prim even in her washed-out Arkham-issue jumpsuit. The grey against her skin made the peach and cream of her ankle flash, the only color in his black-themed, rough stone cell.</p><p>“You really did a number on Crane,” she said nonchalantly. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, her nails cut close to the quick.</p><p>“He started it,” Joker said, bored. He sprawled on the edge of his bed, arm over his face.</p><p>“He’s my friend,” Harley reminded him, as though that should make a difference.</p><p>“I’m truly sorry to hear that,” Joker said, feigning sympathy. “It’s tragic to have such lousy taste in friends.”</p><p>Harley’s breath drew in sharply. Her fingers pulled close to the edge of her sleeve, unraveling a pulled fiber at the edge. It hung, limp, like a spider’s thread.</p><p>“You’re not doing good right now, Joker,” she said, her voice wavering. “I know that, and I’m trying to keep it in mind, but you’re making it pretty damn hard.”</p><p>Joker snorted. “Go f—” His words were smothered in the <em>slam </em>of Harley’s hand hitting the edge of the bed with enough force to rock the creaking contraption.</p><p>“You’re mad about Batman,” she said. “Say it, Joker! Or are you such a coward you can’t even admit it!”</p><p>Joker rolled over onto his back, his arm sliding back to rest above his forehead; he stared at the ceiling and laughed until it hurt, until he had to clutch his stomach and his breath would only barely wheeze through before being strangled.</p><p>“Fine,” Harley said at last, with barely-hidden disdain. “Lie to yerself, what do I care? But don’t expect me to come and pick up the pieces.” She got up, the sudden lack of weight beside him disorienting, and he could hear the pad of her steps, the creak of his door being opened, and falling shut behind her.</p><hr/><p>And one time, Batman didn’t come at all.</p><hr/><p>Jack was still lying on the floor, in water washed as pink as though the sharks had been in it, when Batman finally arrived; but by then, Jason was long gone. Jack’s laughter had trailed away, salt streaking his cheeks, and now all he could do was heave breath after breath, feeling only a numbing tiredness, a disorientation that felt like grief. He sat up at the creak of heavy boots upon the basement stair, followed by Harley’s familiar tread, and he composed himself, pulling on his persona as armor. He couldn’t face the Bat otherwise, even if the Bat <em>was</em> just sad orphan Brucie under it all. He did it because it was the only thing he <em>could</em> do; the only way he could think to save even a margin of the disaster this night had become. Even so, his heart wasn’t in it; he wished sickly that Batman <em>would</em> take that last step tonight, put him out of his misery for good; but he knew it was pointless. Not with <em>Saint Harley</em> around.</p><p>One look at the chair, covered in bloodstained ropes, was enough. The stillness in Batman’s frame seemed taut, like whipcord before it snaps back; he picked up the end with one glove, held it in the palm of his hand. His face was turned away.</p><p>The next moment, when he turned toward Jack, crouching against the wall, was the worst: because for the very first time, what Jack saw in Batman’s eyes was hatred.</p><p>He’d thought being left behind by Batman was the worst. Only now did he realize he’d have preferred anything, even Batman leaving him behind, to this.</p><p>“Where is he,” Batman said. Quiet. Controlled. He walked over, his cape sweeping to rest behind him, hiding Harley from view.</p><p>“Gone,” Jack said.</p><p>Batman’s hands trembled. “Where <em>is</em> he,” he repeated, and the desperation in his voice made Jack want to cover his ears.</p><p>“Gone,” Jack said again. “You’ll never find his body.”</p><p>Batman pulled him up by the collar, searching his eyes for any hint of a lie, and Jack laughed, short and choked, before falling silent. Batman would never find a body because there wasn’t a body to find. <em>Come on, Great Detective</em>, he thought, despite himself. <em>Put the evidence together. Figure out what really happened</em>. He stared back, a challenge in his own eyes, daring Batman to understand, to <em>see</em> him, like he always had.</p><p>The fist around his throat grew tighter. There was nothing in Batman’s eyes but a wild loss, clouding over everything; he stared straight through Jack. Though there was earth all around them, coffin-deep, Jack thought he could see the moment Batman fell, free-wheeling without a grapple to save him, without anything, anyone.</p><p><em>It’s for the best</em>, Jack tried to tell himself. <em>Without Robin, things can go back to normal. Without Robin,</em> <em>the gatekeepers</em> <em>won’t get on us anymore, because Batman will come to heel like he always has. He won’t know what else to do. The poor man doesn’t know how to make a decision for himself</em>.</p><p>It was true. But things would never be the same; and Jack knew it. He knew it, because Batman didn’t look away, didn’t pace the room looking for clues. Didn’t study the bucket and mop, didn’t follow the trail of blood up the stairs, didn’t take note of Joker’s missing coat, didn’t see the suitcase still thrown open on the bed half-full of money, didn’t notice the smudge of blood against the doorjamb where Jason had leant and the scuffs his shoes had left in the hall as he stood, and shuffled, and turned, didn’t leave the house and walk down the shadowed street, didn’t look for Jason at all. He <em>believed</em> Harley. Even looking in Jack’s eyes.</p><p>He believed Harley.</p><p><em>Just ask me</em>, Joker thought. <em>Ask me the right question. Ask me if he’s dead. Ask me if I killed him. I swear I won’t lie to you; pinky-promise.</em></p><p>But Batman didn’t ask.</p><p>Finally, Harley came. Got between them, pressed her small hands against the Bat’s chest, looked up and pleaded, her words a dull drone amid a rushing wave. They were pulled back to Arkham together, were taken into separate cells, and Jack’s door was locked.</p><p>Outside, on the roof opposite, Batman stood long into the night, silent, still. He didn’t crouch to blend in with the gargoyles and standing chimneys. He stood like a reproach, like the question he hadn’t dared to ask. And on his bed, Jack sat, knees to his chest, looking away.</p><hr/><p>When, a month later, he was finally allowed out of his cell; the world, gray and washed out and cold with oncoming winter, was different.</p><p>“It was just a joke,” Jack explained, clenching his fingers across his clasped hands until only the red bite of his nails on skin made color in the chalkboard-white.</p><p>The gatekeepers had been happy enough with his “solution” to their problem. He’d not been reprimanded, apart from the solitary confinement, for show. Joker, of course, was immune to the effects of solitary. Everyone knew that. Nothing stopped the madman, nothing stopped his whirring brain and his constant cheer. Put him in the Arctic for a year and he’d be fine, probably. A month was nothing.</p><p>So Jack made it be nothing. He knew only too well what showing weakness lead to. The only way to keep any high ground was to pretend nothing hurt at all.</p><p>In the corner of the cafeteria, frost was snaking its way across the single panes of old glass, chilling the enormous room. Most of the inmates were congregated together on the side closest to the kitchen, and the warmth; their natural fear of the cold overturning their fear of socializing packed together seven or eight to a table.</p><p>On the far end of the windowed stretch, Fries was sitting by himself, as he always did; he was looking out the window, his face serene, his expression shuttered.</p><p>Across from him, Tetch was humming and reciting snatches of Lewis Carroll under his breath. Jack didn’t think he was listening at all—the old man hadn’t said a word throughout the whole story of Robin’s death (minus the fact that he’d had a good reason for wanting the kid gone, one that an open-minded person might even call <em>public-spirited</em>, at least for his fellow villains—and the fact that Robin wasn’t, in fact, dead) but on hearing <em>it was just a joke</em>, he looked up.</p><p>“You shouldn’t make jokes if it makes you so unhappy,” he said clearly.</p><p>“Don’t quote <em>Through the Looking-Glass</em> at me,” Jack said.</p><p>Jervis paused for a moment, meditatively. He twirled his spoon, round and round, in his porridge. “You think you’re so smart,” he said at last. “Smarter than the rest of us, don’t you, Joker? You take such pride in being <em>above</em> the common rabble of loonies. Well I say this. <em>We’re all mad here. You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here</em>. Take good advice when you get it, young man, even if it’s in the form of a quotation. You think knowing everyone else’s problems means you can judge them. You know, you might have much fewer enemies, and many more friends willing to help you, if you only took a kind gesture when if was offered, instead of spitting it back in everyone’s face. Consider it.”</p><p>Tetch picked up his bowl and walked quickly away, leaving Jack gaping after him, not sure if he’d really heard the usually timid Hatter speaking in such a way—to <em>him</em>, of all people!</p><p>It was suddenly very cold by the windows. The short sleeves that were all that Arkham provided didn’t cover the goose-pimples on his chilled arms. His gruel looked like Gotham snow—lumpy and gray and run over by a car.</p><p>Being publically known as <em>the man who murdered Robin</em> sucked.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The gatekeepers arranged to get rid of Bane; the man stood to ruin their perfect scheme, after all. They got some college kid who’d signed up for university-funded drug testing to do it. Jack didn’t know the details, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that Batman had retreated—wouldn’t be drawn out for anything.</p><p>“Do you have <em>any</em> idea why this may have happened,” a large, frazzled woman holding a clipboard like a blunt weapon asked. There were streaks of premature grey in her dark hair. Even her sensible shoes and stylish pantsuit couldn’t disguise the fact that she was ugly, a bone-deep ugliness of spirit that reeked. Jack didn’t bother to face her as he replied.</p><p>“Maybe because his sidekick was publically murdered,” he said flatly.</p><p>She didn’t even have the grace to flinch. Somehow, even killing someone in cold blood didn’t put honest fear into these people; Jack thought they’d been getting more and more inured to any sort of violence the crazies could think of to dish out on their marching orders. His reputation just didn’t cut it anymore. His box of tricks didn’t seem to thrill anyone, least of all him.</p><p>“But we <em>need</em> Batman,” the woman repeated, as though saying it again would change a single damn thing.</p><p>“Join the club,” Jack said.</p><hr/><p>He and a whole group of the old crowd were let loose on Gotham, to cause trouble until Batman showed up. Jack spent the first few weeks on a ratty couch in one of his bolt-holes, sleeping, eating, and only getting up to piss in a bucket. Finally though, his endless supply of canned goods lost their luster. He crawled up from the depths, sat on the cracked concrete porch and wished for a cigarette. He didn’t have any money. He patted his pockets—nothing. Wandered back inside and poked through the place singlemindedly—nothing. At last, the stench registered, and he wrinkled his nose. “What a sty,” he said, looking around. It was the kind of place a rat would go to die in. He tossed the bucket, lugged away the dirty cans to a trashcan lying open and dented on the road, and threw a bottle of bleach on the floor. The bracing chemical smell cleared his head, and he even hummed while he pressed his good suit, and stood posing before the mirror. Still, it didn’t feel good anymore, the way it once had. He didn’t know why.</p><p>For a moment, even the thought of planning a heist was too much. He sagged to the floor, wishing desperately for Harley; but she’d kept to her word. She was gone. By the time he’d gotten out of solitary after Robin, she’d been gone, and no one would tell him where she went. Only digging had lead him to the fact that she’d been moved to another facility; that she was working to get out.</p><p>Good for her.</p><p>He didn’t think he could forgive her, even if he could never stop loving her. He wasn’t sure he could forgive himself. He knew they were over. Still, without her, life had become a bewildering set of obstacles, simple though they might be. Batman was still a no-show, and it was his fault. All of it was his fault. He’d try to kill himself if it weren’t more trouble than he could stand.</p><p>All right. Baby steps. Bank heist first. Then cigarette.</p><p>He walked to the nearest bank, gun in hand. Paused at the door, put on his menacing swagger, and burst in with a few warning shots and trademark laughter. He went up to the till, found some fresh-faced blond trying to bleed out behind the counter and co-opted her.</p><p>She looked like Harley.</p><p>She was so <em>young</em>, so <em>terrified</em>. He didn’t want to leave her like that, with drying blood dribbling across her forearms, not when she trailed behind him without a fuss. So he decided to play: called her <em>Harley</em>, once, on a whim. Kept doing it, wondering what, if anything, would happen, or if he would leave the bank without her after all.</p><p>But when at last she called him <em>mister J</em> he could feel the very slightest tug of a smile at his lips. That sneaky girl. She’d taken the bait; whether through self-opportunism or self-preservation it didn’t matter.</p><p>“Good job, Harley-girl,” he said magnanimously, as she deposited the last bag of cash, and she spun on her heel and squealed, in a way that reminded him… not of Harley. Not of the Harley he’d ended up with, anyhow. Maybe Harley one day when they were both young and stupid, believing that just loving each other would be enough. He couldn’t let her go, couldn’t let this young kid kill herself behind the counter of a bank. He opened the door of the vehicle they commandeered for their getaway car, the driver’s side, and she got behind the wheel and drove, taking the turns as he directed her without a word of protest. There was a sparkle in her eyes, some kind of determination that was growing with every moment, every proof of her own ability.</p><p>As the sirens wailed behind them, she even laughed, and that was what clinched it: it was a sound of pure joy and <em>power</em>. He looked at her, her wide smile, the crinkles around her eyes when she turned her head to look at him, and he smiled indulgently in return.</p><p>Harley had left her costume behind, of course: still folded in their main hideout in the old joke shop, in the hall closet. He stood for one moment, coatless, while the kid waited uncomfortably on the couch in the front room, held it to his nose and breathed in the smell of her detergent. But, finally, he was able to turn, and take it out with him.</p><p>“I noticed you forgot this,” he said playfully, smiling to show her it was only a gentle tease. “It really doesn’t do to have my henchgirl forgetting her gear, you know.”</p><p>“S-sorry, mister J,” she said.</p><p>He had alcohol and bandages with him, and he took her arms and cleaned the wounds, before wrapping them up, watching the wariness in her expression, the way she almost shied away, then didn’t, poised, caught between what she wanted to believe and her better instincts. He didn’t look at her, talked softly, chattering about nothing in particular, until at last he had bandaged it entirely, and he held out his palms and smiled crookedly to show it was done. When he sat down beside her, picked up her hand and kissed the back of it, she only reached one hand to the back of her neck, shyly; and peered at him, coy, from under her lashes. He doubted anyone had ever made her feel like a lady before, made her feel loved.</p><p>It was a strange role to play, taking care of someone else; but he’d successfully taken care of pigeons, dogs, piranhas, three hyenas (though never more than two at once) and a monkey, and he knew that all animals, even the human kind, were basically the same. They were all selfish, greedy things, looking out for their own interests—(and, sometimes, the ability to share their living moments with another, if only for the briefest instant; if only to know that they weren’t alone).</p><hr/><p>The gatekeepers came up with a stop-gap: a fake Batman. He called himself Azrael, and he did the job well enough, but he didn’t fool the villains, and rumors were starting to fly. Everyone was getting antsy, waiting for the other shoe to drop.</p><p>Then Batman returned.</p><p>With Robin.</p><p>It was a different Robin, he knew that at once: not only was the kid younger, barely a teen, but everything about him was different. He wore the same costume, but somehow for him it <em>was</em> a costume; he fought like he was onstage, like a bird who really <em>could</em> fly. Batman tried to keep him away, probably told him all the reasons why he should never tangle with Joker, but they ended up fighting, sometimes; the three of them. This New Robin was never at a loss for quips and jokes that made Joker smile and volley back; and despite Batman’s best efforts at seriousness, their fights would end up a tennis match of puns.</p><p>Still, no matter how many goons Robin knocked out and tied up, no matter the kid’s hopeful smile when the fight was over, Batman never had anything more for him than a nod: no, <em>good job, chum</em>, no hand on his shoulder, no ruffling his hair. And Robin would stare after the swirl of his retreating cape, frustration writ into his features, anger and something more than anger, something lost and hungry and uncertain.</p><hr/><p>Sometimes Joker tried to write letters, something that would capture the depth of his emotion, something that would encapsulate everything he’d ever thought and felt about Batman, and the strange thing between them.</p><p><em>There were two guys in a lunatic asylum</em>… no.</p><p><em>There once was a man from Nantucket</em>… better. Still. Words, no matter how rhyming, metaphors, no matter how brilliantly conceived, even the naked, ugly truth, became washed out on paper; paled beside the deadly brilliance of a twisted scheme, each perfectly-honed, incongruous, unnecessary part a perfect statement. <em>This will be your end. Your final performance. This stage—but no; you’ll find your way. Somewhere in all the seven extra steps, between the piranhas and the paperweight, falls your shadow— tripped before its time, the end is as much built into the mechanics of the death-trap as if you had predicted it; <br/>you-dead and you-living <br/>simultaneously <br/>resolving, like a miracle of pixilated images, every time you survive; <br/>re-making the world as it is and not as it could be.</em></p><p>
  <em>(C<sub>3</sub>H<sub>5</sub>N<sub>3</sub>O<sub>9</sub> + D.E.)</em>
</p><hr/><p>He couldn’t breathe.</p><p>Probably something to do with the Bat’s fingers around his throat, cutting off his air in a way that would leave vivid bruises. There was a time, Joker remembered, when Batman had been more careful—perhaps out of consideration to Joker. Perhaps out of self-preservation. Not wanting to be accused—</p><p>But the Knight has long-since learned Arkham will turn a blind eye to anything, even the mottled shape of fingers on skin.</p><p>Joker wondered if Batman had ever, really, been the gentleman he recalled, or if in the lack of him, in the time between that distant past and now, he’d reinterpreted it all, without anyone to hold him to a coherent story. He wondered if it mattered. He wondered—</p><p>If any of the old photographs he’d cut so carefully out of the newspapers; a smiling (<em>smiling!</em>) Batman beside him as Joker’s dazed giddy grin, almost too intimate for a news story, hid in plain sight—meant anything. It had taken him so long to realize that he <em>missed</em> it, to realize how unusual an expression that was. Lost whatever chance they might have started out with.</p><p>
  <em>But did he regret it?</em>
</p><p>That would require unraveling his whole history—</p><p>Finally, the fingers retracted, and Joker leaned forward, choking and wheezing and already reaching for the acid in his boutonniere. A squeeze, and the Bat ducked, and acid splashed sickly against the stone of the old building, some ruin that might have had historical significance, if Gotham was in any way respectful of the past.</p><p>It dripped down, fizzling black char.</p><p>Batman’s leg had already swung out, crashed into his solar plexus and he went down. Nails scrabbling fruitlessly against the cold surface, he stared up at the open space that might have once been a window and now was only a hole. Icy wind seized the space. He groaned, coughed; his eyes rolled. Kicked out and got Batman in the shin with the retractable knife hidden in the bottom of his shoe.</p><p>A grunt, and Batman cracked the shoe, ankle and all, into the floor, till the point broke and snapped off, tinkling dully, into a shadowed corner. Joker huffed, scowled, and elbowed Batman in the face; it turned into a sort of frantically defeated wave with his fingers over Batman’s nose.</p><p>Batman bit his wrist.</p><p>Joker crashed his forehead into the Bat’s face, sending the Dark Knight sprawling backward, a thud of helmeted cowl against the ground.</p><p>Did it matter if neither was trying to kill the other, if they acted from that premise regardless? (or: <em>weren’t</em> they?)</p><p>Batman rolled to the side, rose again, and pinned Joker down, hands on his skinny arms, straddling him with his heavier weight. Cheek smashed into the stone, dizzily, Joker spat out blood and struggled.</p><p>It was over anyway. The dead had already died, the hostages were already rescued, the wail of police sirens could already be heard like a faraway sound in a dream.</p><p>Joker breathed, raggedly, while his heart pounded, wondering if this was fear. He didn’t think so, but it didn’t feel like glee. It was too liquid, too low and rancid. He closed his eyes to keep the tears of pain at bay.</p><p>“Is this what you wanted, Joker?” Batman asked.</p><p>“Get off me,” Joker said tiredly.</p><p>“I <em>hate</em> you,” Batman said. It sounded pitiful. Like a confession.</p><p>Joker laughed, bubbling its way from his gut, a hot knife through intestines.</p><p>“I know.”</p><hr/><p>Joker’s new psychiatrist was a funny one, funny enough he felt like glancing to the side, like he would stare straight through some panel to an interested audience looking on with sympathy.</p><p>He <em>abhorred</em> her.</p><p>To give away the punchline before the fact, Miss Lune ended up admitted into Arkham as a patient. This was not so much <em>a surprise</em> as an expectation; there was a high insanity rate among Arkham’s staff. (So it was a pun, so sue him; he might be pathological but his humor wasn’t part of it).</p><p>“Do you understand what that means, Joker? Witzelsucht?” Miss Lune said.</p><p>Joker pursed his lips. “I <em>understand</em>,” he said. “You think I’m not crazy.”</p><p>“…One might expect you’d find that relieving,” she observed mildly.</p><p>“You think I’m <em>brain damaged</em>,” Joker said, with exaggerated tact. “I hardly see how that’s supposed to be any better.”</p><p>There was a long silence. She sighed. “Well, we’ll get your scans back soon enough.”</p><p>“And if it were true?” Joker pressed. “What <em>then</em>?”</p><p>“I would give us new areas for treatment—”</p><p>“So nothing would change,” Joker said.</p><p>“Not entirely,” the doctor said, perking up. “The compulsion with joke-telling is incurable, yes; but there’s been some success with decreasing the urge to laugh.”</p><p>“…lovely,” Joker said.</p><p>“It would explain your reaction to these tests,” she continued, pointing to the papers beside her, and who the <em>hell</em> thought to test him on <em>humor</em>? He <em>owned</em> humor. So what if he didn’t laugh at other people’s jokes or find them funny? “—and it would make sense, based on your known history with brain trauma.”</p><p>“My what now?”</p><p>Had they, in fact, spontaneously entered a parallel universe where any of this made sense?</p><p>She looked at him with some surprise. “Your fall into the vat of acid.”</p><p>“My fall into the—” he knew it wouldn’t help but he couldn’t stop himself from laughing, a wide grin stretching over his face. Now <em>there</em> was a joke—and there went the answer to that question, she wasn’t one of the gatekeepers, didn’t know about any of the lies.</p><p>“Oh, by the way Miss Lune, what’s green, hanging on the wall, and squealing?” he asked, turning to face her as he was escorted out of the room by an orderly. It <em>sounded</em> uncomfortably like a threat, particularly as the psychiatrist was overly fond of the color, always coming in wearing olive pantsuits and coral earrings, and he was pleased by the way her eyes widened and she swallowed, gaze darting about as though looking for some way to run.</p><p>But in fact, it was a red herring.</p><hr/><p>The New Robin had a regrettable tendency to be kidnapped, which was the kid’s only downside. Joker heard about the latest occurrence, one time, passing by; took a detour to the death-trap and realized Batman wouldn’t get there before the kid died. It didn’t even take a moment’s thought before he was running in, looking over the pulley and lever system, the gears and the whirring blades. Robin’s eyes followed him, wary and uncertain, but unable to call out through his gag. Slowly, surely, Joker disabled the mechanism; came in, untied him, and sat him at last on the warehouse floor, leaning against a pillar.</p><p>The kid unknotted the gag and spit on the floor, reached to his wrists, rubbed red from the ropes around them, and tried to massage them.</p><p>“Why’d you save me,” he said at last, wary; skittish, the way the other Robin had never been, to his peril. He had something neither his predecessor nor Batman had: a healthy sense of self-preservation and a keen sense of where danger actually was, without ever moving into paranoia.</p><p>Joker shrugged vaguely. “Batman wasn’t going to get to you in time.”</p><p>That, somehow, was too much: though it was true. Robin’s breath hitched, and then he was crying, all of a sudden; wrapping his arms around himself, the bruises raw and ugly.</p><p>“Hey… hey,” Joker said, awkwardly, crouching down beside him. “It’s all right. You’re ok now. Just let Uncle J take care of it, ok?” He reached out, gingerly petting the kid’s hair until he calmed down, until his sobs had changed to snot-filled gasps. Joker reached into his pocket for a handkerchief—Bat-print, his favorite, but perhaps not the most tactful—ah, that was better, a nice, colorful bunch of pinwheels. He handed it over, and Robin blew his nose noisily.</p><p>“Batman’s gonna be so mad,” Robin said at last, staring at Joker with red-rimmed eyes.</p><p>“Why would he be mad?” Joker asked, confused.</p><p>“Because I got captured again,” Robin said. He wiped one arm roughly across his face, trying to dry the tears. “I know I’m not a very good soldier,” he confessed, as though he were sharing a terrible secret.</p><p>There were a number of disturbing implications to unpack right there, but Joker skipped straight to the crux. “What do you mean? You’re <em>perfect</em>. How could anyone not like you?” he was truly baffled, stumped. This Robin was everything he could have hoped for to bandage up Batman’s raw psyche; he was good at his job, he enjoyed it, he followed orders to the letter and (to Joker’s eyes) understood that this was all a game. The important part was to have <em>fun</em>. Even if he <em>hadn’t</em> been perfect, Joker wouldn’t have tried to go after him: he’d had enough of being a Robin-killer. Fortunately, Batman was continuing his usual destructive ways, so it was a non-issue.</p><p>Robin just looked at him, almost pityingly. “You don’t understand,” he said.</p><p>But Joker thought, uncomfortably, that he might. “You’re not the only one who was never good enough for Batman,” he muttered at last, looking at the floor.</p><p>Robin laughed a little, then pressed his lips quickly together.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You <em>killed</em> him,” Robin said, disbelieving. “Why do you think he hates you?”</p><p>Joker’s mouth dropped open. “Why you little…”</p><p>Robin just stared at him challengingly.</p><p>“Take my comfort and repay me like this, would you?” he said, stung.</p><p>Robin shrugged. “It’s true.”</p><p>“How about you, then?” Joker said. “What flaw did the brooding bat find in you, that he can’t even bring himself to show you common affection?”</p><p>Robin flinched, and looked away.</p><p>“It’s not like that,” he said at last. But his voice told that he agreed: there must be <em>something</em>. Surely, if he only tried hard enough, was good enough, he’d figure out how to gain Batman’s love.</p><p>The poor kid. It was fruitless. The Bat was broken, and all the Robins in the world couldn’t put him back together again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"What is green, hanging on a wall and squealing?" </p><p>Answer: "A herring." <br/>Why is the herring green? <br/>"Well, it's my herring, I painted it as I pleased." <br/>But why is it hanging on the wall? <br/>"It's my herring, I can hang it anywhere I wish." <br/>But why is the herring squealing? <br/>"I added squealing to make it harder to solve my riddle."</p><p>http://talkreason.org/marperak/jokes/armenrad.htm (a page of Armenian jokes)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>You need me!<br/>
</em>This is how it starts.</p><p>Always. <em>I’m… touched.</em></p><p>So maybe Bane was good for something after all. He set up their European vacation.</p><p>Late at night in Paris, they’re sitting among the gargoyles, not yet ready to move on. They say all roads lead to Rome, but that’s the <em>end</em>, they can both feel it, encroaching like the barrel of a gun.</p><p>“If we die here…” Batman says, apropos of nothing. Joker turns to look. He’s staring out into the darkness, still, in the heat of summer, but the air around him seems to waver, ribbons of light spilling from his eyes; everything tilting, tilting, falling down around them.</p><p>“What, regretting it already?” Joker says, mouth dry. He tries to grin, but in the night it seems cracked, splintered into a thousand shards he can’t call back. “It’s not a bad death, though,” he continues. “Isn’t it?”</p><p>It wouldn’t be, as long as Batman doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t think he could bear it if Batman regretted it. Belatedly, he wishes they’d figured out how to ever take a holiday without being forced into it by circumstance. This is something he could enjoy, he thinks. Being here, without the roles they’re wont to play.</p><p>It’s a lie. He’s never been able to sit still long enough to rest without being tied up first.</p><p>“Have you ever thought about after?” he says.</p><p>Bruce blinks. Without the searchlights of his eyes, the night seems very cold and dark. He opens them again, vortexes turning toward him. “Not enough data,” he says.</p><p>“Hm?” Joker’s having trouble concentrating on anything but the darkness, the heat-wave emanating from the caped crusader. The world seems to refract around the black hole of his being.</p><p>“Not enough data to count or discount an afterlife,” Batman continues. “I suppose I’ll just have to find out when it happens.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t have pegged you for an agnostic,” Joker says.</p><p>“Agnostic theist.” Batman tilts his head. “What <em>did</em> you guess?”</p><p>“Catholic,” Joker says.</p><p>Batman huffs, a sound that seems to carry a nostalgic warmth with it, like autumn bonfires. “You’re not wrong. It was my father’s religion.”</p><p>“Not your mother’s,” Joker says.</p><p>Batman shakes his head. “Jewish. As you can imagine, that made for some interesting family reunions.” He laughs that short, choked sound that seems like a tangle of repression; like wire and blood.</p><p>He knows this. He <em>ought</em> to know this; Batman is Bruce Wayne, after all. But he’s never actually considered that the mask might hold a man with history. Thought that, like Athena, he sprang forth from the skull of a god of the skies.</p><p>“Well?” Bruce says. He gestures, holding out his hand. “What about you?”</p><p>It’s enough to shake him from the feeling of falling, for a moment; he feels grounded. Ready for any lightning.</p><p>Joker chuckles. “I’m a nihilist!”</p><p>“I’d never have guessed,” Batman returns, drily. “But for real. You must have a stance on the issue.”</p><p>“Similar to yours, I suppose—no way to tell. (Though I don’t know why you have to presuppose god; I’d prefer not to.) —Not that it matters…” Joker mutters. “So what if there’s a supreme being? If every choice we made was pre-ordained, part of some great plan, the joke’s on us. On the other hand… if the universe is nothing but chaos, a mass of inert matter with no consciousness, and we’re all merely some kind of cosmic accident… well, different joke, same punch line.” Joker shrugs. “Nothing we do matters.” He looks at Batman. “You’d never admit to it, but you see it too.”</p><p>“Au contraire, Joker,” Batman says, with a grim smile. “Whether it’s because we’ll be judged for it when this is over, or because this is the only life we’ll ever have… <em>everything</em> we do matters.”</p><p>Joker sighs. “We’re never going to see eye to eye on this, are we.”</p><p>Sweat dries, tacky, on his exposed skin; under his gloves his hands, red and inflamed, itch. He’s hot and terribly cold, blinking the dry scratchiness from his eyes.</p><p>“If we die here…” Batman says.</p><p>Joker laughs shortly. Wonders how many times Batman would race round the same track, if he let him. Batman turns to look, bemusement in the turn of his white eyes. He doesn’t remember.</p><p>If they’re lucky, and they both survive, Batman still might not remember any of this. It twists something uncomfortably inside him. He never wanted to be the one who had to remember. That was always Batman’s job, for he was incomparably good at it. Who else would bear the weight of Joker’s sins?</p><p>“Have you ever thought about after?” he says; the words harsh, blaring against the shivering darkness, swallowed up.</p><p>For a long moment, he doesn’t think Batman’s going to answer. Perhaps he’s already forgotten the question; drifted away from the tether of reason that Joker’s clinging to for the both of them. He’s trying to hold on against the current, the shore lost in mist and his arms round the nightmare, but the bat-rope in his hand seems to unravel into sparks of live current around them.</p><p>“Sometimes,” Batman says at last. “…I don’t mean to sound romantic, but if not for Gotham, there’d be Paris.”</p><p>Joker leans back, his elbows clunking against the stone. The tilting is back, or perhaps it’s never left, a feeling of vertigo. He lies down, feet dangling off the edge, the precipice of cathedrals of grotesques. He thinks he must be imagining. Perhaps this all is nothing but a fever dream.</p><p>“Certainly,” Bruce allows, “there are other cities I could call home, but I don’t think there’s another that could make me <em>feel</em> it. I’ve actually entertained the idea, that once this calling of mine cripples me, time spend in a wheelchair on the banks of the Seine would be good time. Worth the life that preceded it.”</p><p>Above, there’s nothing but darkness, darkness with the moon looking down like a flashlight’s beam on a curtain.</p><p>“Sorry…” Batman says. “That does sound romantic…”</p><p>“No,” Joker says. “No, it’s all right.”</p><p>“Is it?” Batman says. He looks down, and the dark spires of his ears pierce through the moon, hiding them. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d approve. I thought you wanted to do this forever. Go down swinging…”</p><p>“I thought <em>you</em> would,” Joker says, choking down a laugh.</p><p>“Well,” Batman allows with a smile, “I didn’t say it was <em>likely</em>… but fantasies rarely are.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Joker says. The words seem crowded at the roof of his mouth, tumbling at his throat; he needs to speak, to promise before something changes, shatters the night again with the call of sirens, of bells. “I’ll remember it for you.”</p>
<hr/><p>Joker kept waiting for New Harley to make a move on him. He knew he had her for a sucker, knew she was in love, and that was how <em>normal</em> love went; he’d seen the movies; heard Harley complain enough times about his lack of interest, how she always had to be the one to initiate sex.</p><p>She hadn’t waited until she was his henchgirl; all it had taken was stringing her along in the asylum, when she still thought she was in charge. The moment she forewent therapy to crawl over him on the bed, unbuttoning his shirt, touching him everywhere, he’d known he had her. If not as an ally than as blackmail material, because it didn’t look very good, now did it, for a psychiatrist to abuse their patient this way.</p><p>New Harley was different, and it made him jittery. He kept waiting, and nothing kept happening, but she didn’t seem to lose interest; didn’t stare at him with that expression of disappointment and self-recrimination. Instead, she seemed to unfurl; every day a little bolder, her smile a little freer, without that shadow behind it. She didn’t have Harley’s gymnast fluidity. She moved like a girl, all unselfconscious force and gangly limbs; she couldn’t kick a man over with only her feet and a twist of her body, so she improvised: found herself a mallet, somewhere, and to his amusement that did the job nicely. But it was when she started making the costume her own that he knew she was there to stay, and the jittery feeling started to subside. First came black boots: better for her propensity to stomp than Old Harley’s slip of a shoe meant for light weight, ease of movement. Then the cowl came off, leaving her face uncovered, her blond hair free in its ponytails. Finally the rest of the costume went: replaced by dual-colored tights and sleeves, fingerless gloves with diamonds cut above the knuckles, shorts she’d wrangled with, tearing the seams of the two, black and red denim, that she’d bought, stitching each side up the middle with much cursing and stabbing of needles; a t-shirt ripped above her belly. It was all a bit outlandish, made him realize how <em>young</em> she was, but he didn’t care. It made her happy, it let her move freely, like she <em>knew</em> she looked good in it, because she did.</p><p>He felt overdressed next to her in coat and waistcoat, so he ditched the coat and the waistcoat. Couldn’t part with his suit-pants and suspenders for something as uncomfortable as jeans, even if that was all the rage these days, but instead of a dress shirt found a collection of Batman t-shirts and cut it short to match hers. She giggled, when he waltzed out of his dressing room and struck a pose. “Now, tell me truthfully: do I look fabulous or do I look fabulous?”</p><p>New Harley tilted her head sideways, looked over him with deep concentration and mock seriousness, though he could see the delighted grin still bubbling at the edge of her mouth. “I think you look fabulous, boss,” she said finally.</p><p>“Now we match again,” he said, with deep satisfaction, curling close to her on the bed and holding her hand. For a moment he wondered, <em>will it be now? Is she tired of waiting, after all?</em> But she only reached to take his hand, and curled his fingers in her own.</p><p>They slept there, on the top of the covers, and for the first time since Robin, he slept without nightmares.</p>
<hr/><p>They were pulling a heist; he spun the knob on the radio, changing it from the news (boring, always the same old thing) to music. A jazzy beat stirred him, and he hop-skipped, his feet falling into familiar twirling steps as he followed the sound around the room. It was a hold-up, a group of rich hostages at a swanky party all staring in abject terror at the masked men with their clown-painted faces; at Joker.</p><p>
  <em>“The night was splendid<br/>
And the melody seemed to say<br/>
‘Summer will pass away<br/>
Take your happiness while you may…’”</em>
</p><p>He came to a stop in the center of the cleared ballroom, beside New Harley, who giggled quietly, glancing at him with a soft smile. “What?” he said, buoyant.</p><p>“You’re cute when you dance, puddin’,” she said.</p><p>Joker stopped for a moment, not sure how to take it. He flipped his switchblade in a curving arc—<em>snick-swish</em>—and caught it again, without thinking. Probably not good for his image to have someone say he was cute and get away with it; not even his henchgirl. Old Harley wouldn’t have said something that was so obviously not with the program. He’d taken her to task for it before. But—ah, hell—it’s not like the captives would care.</p><p>Defending one’s machismo only took one so far; and he was too old to worry about it anymore.</p><p>“C’mon, join me,” he said, holding out an arm.</p><p>New Harley blushed, but hesitated. He gave her a sharp glare, though, and she complied. It was only when they were close enough to whisper that she said a bit apprehensively, “I don’t know how to dance, Boss. Not like that.”</p><p>“Well, we’ll just have to fix that, won’t we?” he asked. He looked up for one moment. “Take the exit, Rocko,” he said.</p><p>“Sure thing Boss,” Rocko said, settling on the side of the room, gun in hand. He’d been Joker’s henchman for long enough to know the drill, and Joker felt safe enough leaving him in charge for a moment to focus on this.</p><p>“When I step forward, you’re gonna step back,” he said, easily. “No, don’t look, just trust me—follow what I’m doing, you’ve got it—”</p><p>
  <em>“…There 'neath the light of the moon<br/>
We sang a love song that ended too soon…”</em>
</p><p>Years back, he’d been a scared kid playing at being bigger and better than he was. He’d gone straight from high school to crime-ridden Gotham, spending days holed up in smoky back rooms planning heists, nights practicing his safe-cracking skills and telling whatever jokes he could manage to think up in between. It hadn’t left much time for culture, though the radio had always been there. After that was prison, the Red Hood and then Arkham; he’d known how to run, sure, but he didn’t know control, couldn’t make his steps follow any rules.</p><p>It had taken Harley to show him that. Frustrated, one night, she’d flopped on the bed and complained she hadn’t been to a proper nightclub in years. “I just don’t have a partner,” she said, looking at him meaningfully.</p><p>“…Eh?” Joker replied, oh-so eloquently.</p><p>“Dance with me, mistah J,” she said, sitting up, leaning toward him with that look of supplication on her face he never could refuse. So he did—tried to—standing stiffly, sweat pouring down his back as the music revved up like police sirens, trying to figure out how to fake it as she slid into the steps of a simple swing dance. She didn’t let on she saw how he stumbled and stopped; and inch by inch he relaxed, smug in his own superiority, his unparalleled ability to bluff. And night after night they practiced, her guiding him while seeming to follow, until they really <em>were</em> dancing; and something clicked in his head: he <em>loved</em> it. And he loved her. Twisting their way through the room as they avoided the piles of junk they could rarely be bothered to pick up, practicing more and more daredevil stunts. Harley was up for anything and her gymnastics ability never failed, even when she had to swing from his shoulders or do flying flips.</p><p>It had been like learning a new language; and when he tangled with Batman, he found himself stepping forward, back, to the side as if <em>they</em> were dancing too. Because that’s what it was, even if Batman never admitted it out loud.</p><p>“Uh-oh!” New Harley said, her feet going the wrong way; they crashed into each other. She stared into his eyes in apprehension, as though waiting to be scolded. Joker giggled, then shook his head, grinning.</p><p>“Well, you ain’t a natural, kiddo, but we’re getting there.”</p><p>New Harley laughed too, and her grip on his shoulder relaxed.</p><p>
  <em>“…The moon descended<br/>
And I found with the break of dawn<br/>
You and the song had gone,<br/>
But the melody lingers on.”</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>“Have<em> you ever thought about after?” he asks. </em></p><p>
  <em>“All the time,” Batman replies. The look in his eyes—still glowing, leaving trails behind him, like a 3D image viewed without a lens—is knowing, and sad. Joker doesn’t know how he could have missed it before—the eyes weren’t blanked out. They never had been. They were open, and blue, dilated pupils staring into him; the view from the bottom of a well into open sky.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’ve always been drawn to Tibetan practices, particularly Dzongchen,” he says, this time. “As something to aspire to, though I haven’t gotten far.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So many layers of answers, multiple choice: all true. One on top of another like a nesting doll. Will he ever reach the end?</em>
</p><p><em>Does he </em>want<em> to?</em></p><p><em>Only later, the word singing its way back from his mind into his eyes, he looks it up, because he’s never been able to resist the call of knowledge. Of trying to </em>understand<em>.</em></p><p>—Because its essence is empty, it is free from the limit of eternalism<br/>
—Because its nature is luminous, it is free from the extreme of nihilism<br/>
—Because its compassion is unobstructed, it is the ground of the manifold manifestations</p><p>
  <em>He doesn’t understand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps that’s the joke.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Joker was the first to admit that his fights with Batman were usually a little one-sided. But like any couple, they liked to switch it up sometimes.</p><p>It only happened when Batman was in a better frame of mind; when he felt confident enough to relinquish control for a little while, assured that he had enough power, enough command, in his persona. But Joker was always on the lookout for those three little words. Darting through the broken-down theater at the edge of the docks, wind and rain blowing through in sheets, as they crashed about the place, stepping on broken chandeliers and ripping moth-eaten curtains to shreds, trading their usual taunts.</p><p>“Why Bats, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were <em>enjoying</em> this!” Joker crowed, and swung a crumbled block of reinforced concrete toward the caped crusader. Batman ducked, and it dented the wall.</p><p>“You’re deluded, Joker,” Batman said. “You always act like you want to kill me—but we both know <em>you need me</em>.”</p><p>Joker stopped short. In the shadows of the theater, Batman’s eyes were dark, swept over with glittered pinpricks of rain.</p><p>Then Joker’s mouth quirked up into a smile. “You don’t say. Well, Bats…” he walked forward nonchalantly, noticing Bruce tense as he got near, and then follow him, confused, as he walked on by, “that’s a pretty pickle, isn’t it? What am I to do with you?”</p><p>Batman lunged, and Joker leaped: off the edge of the crumbled stage into the pit, laughing as Batman followed after. Joker landed lightly, but the force of Batman’s weight sent him down again, breaking through the unsteady floor, falling into the basement below, and Joker took a forward flip to meet him.</p><p>He could hear Batman breathing heavily, curled up on the ground.</p><p>“Not injured, I hope?”</p><p>“You wish,” Batman said.</p><p>“Good,” Joker said. He shuffled around till he found a candle he’d stashed here and finally managed to light it; the wavering flame cast strange flickering shadows dancing on the wall.</p><p>It was harder to carry supplies now than it had been when his costume included an overcoat as a matter of course, but Joker was nothing if not prepared. He had sheathes in his high-tops, and he pulled out a good collection of small, sharp knives: from his pockets he pulled a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, a few bandages, and, of course, a handkerchief or two.</p><p>“Not the smiley faces,” Batman groaned.</p><p>“Shush,” Joker said. “You’re my prisoner, and prisoners can’t complain. Now open your mouth.” Batman did, grimacing as Joker shoved a smiley-face handkerchief into his mouth gleefully. Batman rolled his eyes.</p><p>Joker straddled Batman, letting his hands ramble over the Bat’s chest as he wondered, out loud, what he ought to do with the captured him. He waited until the heartbeat under his hand went <em>pitter-patter</em>, until Batman could barely keep himself still. He managed though, bravely, clenching his hands into fists, and Joker rewarded him: brushing his black-painted nails over the gloves, coaxing Batman’s palms open and carefully sliding the gauntlets off. The hands were the same; familiar. One ropey scar across the right, another memento. Different than the rest.</p><p>
  <em>Do you remember when I saved you?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Do you ever think of it at all?</em>
</p><p>He picked up a knife and brought it across the top of Batman’s arm, carefully, so as not to injure him. One stroke after another, all without a speck of blood, Batman’s hand held trembling in his own—and then, at the finish, one artistic stroke to barely break the skin.</p><p>He climbed off Batman and pulled the gag from his mouth, letting him gasp in great heaves of air.</p><p>“Feeling all right?”</p><p>Batman grunted.</p><p>Joker poured a little alcohol onto the wound, laughing a little at Batman’s hiss and the pout he sent Joker’s way. “Now how is it,” he asked, “that you can deal with broken bones and you’re up and about like it’s nothing, but one little scratch and you’re a baby?”</p><p>“Shut up,” Batman said.</p><p>Joker bandaged him and pulled the glove back on his hand, then curled down on the packed dirt. Batman put one arm over him and they lay on the floor while thunder boomed from somewhere deep outside, unwilling to get up just yet; watching the storm far above.</p>
<hr/><p>He’d expected New Harley to be angry. Old Harley always had been, when he spent the night fighting with Batman. But, as always, he was letting his perception of one cloud the other: New Harley didn’t care.</p><p>When he walked back around dawn, humming a jaunty tune in the grey light, the rain turning to a steady, pinprick drizzle, she was waiting on the couch, curled up in quilts and blankets. She opened her eyes sleepily as he came in.</p><p>“Mmm. Have a good time with Bats?” she said, yawning a little.</p><p>Joker stopped short, sticking his hands in his pockets guiltily. “Yes,” he said at last.</p><p>She smiled at him. “I’m glad,” she said. “You always get a bit restless when you can’t play with him. But you’re all right now?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Joker said. There was something choked up in his throat, and he had to turn around for a moment and blink quickly, clearing his throat before he could speak again. At last he crawled over the arm of the couch to snuggle under the blankets with her.</p><p>“Ugh, is it raining outside or were you under a sprinkler?”</p><p>“It’s raining,” Joker said. She put her hands on his exposed stomach, sucking her breath in at how cold he was; but soon they had warmed up enough that she began to drift off once more.</p><p>“How,” Joker said, pressing a kiss to her forehead, watching the drip of rain slide down his hair onto her skin, “did I ever get lucky enough to find you, kiddo.”</p><p>Harley giggled. “S’I’m the one lucky to find you.”</p><p>“Then,” Joker decided, “since we can’t <em>both</em> be lucky, it must have been fate after all.”</p><p>And that’s the thing with fate: just when everything can’t get any better, it gets worse.</p>
<hr/><p>New Robin was now Nightwing; and Batman had gained another partner in a cute redhead calling herself Batgirl. Joker liked Batgirl: she was spunky. Unfortunately, she was also sane. Unlike Nightwing, she hadn’t been in the Bat’s clutches from the time she was small, and she’d grown up with her own set of what counted as reasonable assumptions, and the guts to speak her mind. She might have been a <em>Robin</em> kind of problem, except that Batman rarely seemed to actually listen to her.</p><p>Still, her constant screeches of “oh God, the pedestrians” really started to get old. She had no sense of <em>theater</em>.</p><p>Something had changed, though. Joker tried not to let it worry him, but Batman had been <em>off</em> for the past few weeks. He didn’t know the problem; could only try to distract him from his pain with their old song and dance, and it seemed to work. He hardly even had to try to aim these days, to end up with enough requisite destruction to satisfy the gatekeepers. Something was going to crumble; he could feel the roof tiles slip-sliding under his feet.</p><p>He’d been tipped off to a warehouse of some <em>interesting</em> substances recently. Took one of the bottles of pills back to the old homestead and put it under the microscope, taking notes in red crayon. It was a <em>brilliant</em> formula, whatever it was. Something that had to have been engineered specifically to un-do the cosmetic effects of his own Joker formula. That left very few contenders. It wasn’t Crane: Crane’s work had a subtler, more elegant touch. The only other person who knew that Joker could… <em>change</em>; was Harley. If he needed any proof, the addition of antipsychotic medication in the mix would have clinched it.</p><p>It was a nasty formula. He was wary of the way these things would act, if taken for long enough. (If he guessed right, and he wasn’t known as a first-rate chemist for nothing, they would slowly lose their efficacy, and he would revert back to his ordinary chalk-white hue.) It was a formula that could only have been made by someone who hated Joker enough to try to destroy him, and loved him enough to do it sideways, to ease their own conscience, to convince themselves they were trying to help. He wondered if Batman knew what Harley had been getting up to with the freedom he’d bought her.</p><p>Maybe he should find out.</p><p>It was a brilliant scene. The audience was grand, and horrified; Batman might have had some idea to hold back in front of witnesses but Joker knew just what buttons to push. He targeted Batman’s family, his effectiveness, his <em>purpose</em>. Riled him up, trying to see what would work the best this time. Trying to see how far Batman was from snapping, and <em>why</em>. Something was making Batman lose his grip, and it wasn’t Joker.</p><p>“We’re a team, Bats! I don’t expect you to acknowledge it,” he said. “You are, after all, the distancer. I’m the overly-complicated one!”</p><p>“You only pretend we’re a team because it gives you purpose and makes <em>you</em> feel special. But your ego won’t let you see the truth.”</p><p>“And what’s that?” Joker said.</p><p>“You don’t matter,” Batman said. “Not to me, not to Gotham. Not to <em>anyone</em>.”</p><p>Bats had anger issues; that was hardly news. It didn’t bring Joker any closer to figuring out what was wrong with him. In a better time, perhaps Batman would have questions to ask about the pills, and what Joker’s game was with them; perhaps he would have dragged them both away from the crowd and beat it out of him later. But he <em>was</em> doing badly, and so there was an audience: not that Joker minded, for it fit his plan perfectly. A little something to take care of Harley’s plot and bring a bit of spice back into his and Batman’s relationship in one fell swoop. He didn’t need to know what was wrong to know how to fix it: Batman needed mystery, he needed something to obsess over, something complicated and puzzling to take himself away from the emotions that were tearing him apart.</p><p>And Joker? He’d been noticing the way the derelict spots of Gotham grew smaller every year, to be replaced by cheap high-rises. There wasn’t much further he and Batman could <em>go</em> before their usefulness to the gatekeepers was over. And he wasn’t ready to go down like that: without anyone ever having known the truth.</p><p>He had a case by now that was flawless. All it needed was a little <em>push</em>.</p><p>“If I can get better, I can get the city back on track… finally show you… that you need me.” He could barely get the words out around the blood on his mouth and nose; tears of pain fell from his eyes; and maybe more than that. He hadn’t been planning for his <em>heart</em> to be hurt tonight, but push Batman too hard and of course he would push back, and then they would <em>both</em> go tumbling to the ground.</p><p><em>You don’t matter. Not to me, not to Gotham. Not to </em>anyone<em>.</em></p><p>Surely Bats didn’t mean it. He <em>couldn’t</em>. But then: he’d never actually <em>said</em>. That this whole relationship between them was ever meant to be anything more than a fling; a distraction. Joker was no stranger to the emotional power in never saying <em>I love you</em>; he’d done it to Old Harley all the time. First by accident, then in annoyance, in anger. All those silences after those three words, as though unbalancing a broken scale could make it weigh even.</p><p>Batman’s glove was covered in blood when he took the pill bottle from Joker’s outstretched hand.</p><p>“Fine,” Batman said. “You want to get better? Then <em>open up</em>!” He forced Joker’s mouth open and poured pills in, making him swallow until he vomited blood-specked foam.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>O.O I've got 100 kudos on this story! Wow! I can't even believe it... thanks, all the lurkers who are enjoying this :) :) :) I hope you like this next chapter as well!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Joker had to play the part, but he’d been playing a long con for his entire adult life, and he knew how to be patient. Still, he cried as he broke all their mementos: Batman figurines and Joker dolls, pictures of his early arrests, strewn across the ground. Everyone had to believe he was over Batman, that ordinary “Jack Napier” was sane, standing only for the law, with no love lost for vigilantes like Batman. Batman was there, of course, outside the window: watching. Wondering. Trying to figure out where the key was, what the plan was, where the clues were that he was meant to follow. But his instincts would work against him, this time: his gut feeling—correct, of course—that Joker was playing the same game he’d always played would lead right into the trap.</p><p>“Hello, Joker. I’m Doctor Leslie Thompkins.” She smiled tightly, but it didn’t reach her eyes.</p><p>“Jack, please,” Joker said flatly. “Jack Napier. The Joker was a persona foisted upon me.”</p><p>It threw her, he could see; though she must have been warned ahead by the other doctors. Batman had sent her, probably; or she’d come on her own, out of concern. Either way, it all came down to convincing her that Joker was cured.</p><p>They had a desultory conversation. Joker was firm that he did, indeed, intend to press charges. He could see her gaze roaming over his combed-down brown hair, the unchanging lack of expression in his usually lively eyes; he’d practiced that look of detachment in the mirror until it freaked even <em>him</em> out. He didn’t move; blinked only as much as was necessary, sat back as though he hadn’t a care in the world.</p><p>She was rattled. The files, he knew, must rattle her even more: IQ tests he’d scored far higher on than ever before, CAT scans showing “normal brain function”—whatever <em>that</em> was supposed to mean. (That he wasn’t, and had never been brain damaged, anyhow; but then they’d proved that already). The truth was he knew all the tricks in the book. He’d never let the asylum know how smart he was until now: why <em>should</em> he? It would only have put them on their guard. An obsessed nutcase who only cares about Batman and telling jokes is one thing: a genius on the level of Lex Luthor is another.</p><p>“I hear,” said the Hatter, “that you’ve become our White Knight.”</p><p>Joker was sitting on his bed in his emptied-out cell, cleared for his impending move back into society. Without the memorabilia he’d collected over the years it was as drafty and uncomfortable a place as it had once seemed to him so long ago, when he had first been moved to Arkham. He was trying to avoid the other inmates, so that the doctors and judges would think he’d changed his ways; for <em>sane</em> people and crazy people never mix, you know.</p><p>He didn’t know how the Hatter had found a key to his cell, unless the guards had left it unlocked after all; but in Arkham, such a thing was worthy of only idle speculation. There were always ways to get out and in, for the right price.</p><p>“I’m trading places with Batman,” he answered. “Starting a new game.”</p><p>“The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly.”</p><p>“How did I know you’d say that,” Joker said. He crossed his arms behind his head. “You have to understand, Hatter, we’re all sliding down the poker, whatever moves we make. There’s no stopping entropy. But once, just once, I’d like for them to <em>see</em>…”</p><p>“If you hold a Looking-Glass book to a glass, the words will all go the right way again, but I’m afraid they won’t see anything, for they’re only looking for sense,” Tetch said. He came over and patted Joker on the shoulder.</p><p>“Then you think I’ll fail,” Joker said.</p><p>Tetch shrugged. “Perhaps not with Batman. He’s one of us, after all. But with the others…”</p><p>For a moment, Joker almost asked if Tetch knew; if he’d known all along, or figured it out somehow along the way. The whole scheme made by the gatekeepers to keep them in Arkham, to keep the machinery of Gotham running, to line the pockets of the rich. But the habit of years was too strong. He watched Tetch leave, and then curled up on his bed.</p><p>In a slit in the bare mattress, he’d hidden a pack of cards, and he pulled it out, practicing magic tricks to steady his hands and his mind. Soon he’d speak to all of Gotham on a stage; soon he’d be able to reach them in a way that he’d never been able to before; not by laughter, not by terror. Perhaps, if he couldn’t make them <em>feel</em>, at least he’d make them understand pure, cold facts.</p>
<hr/><p>Reduce the Joker to a set of traits the media could rattle off, and suddenly it was easy to convince the public he was anyone but. <em>No more green hair, no more makeup, no more laughter</em><em>: he must not be the Joker anymore!</em> It was a <em>laughable</em> bit of maneuvering.</p><p>“Without all that makeup he’s actually… good looking!” the female news-anchor on the Gotham Insider declared. It made Joker feel ill. Nausea stirred in his stomach, and he had to bite his lip to keep from giggling nervously. He had a persistent headache from the noise of the crowds; the pills were making him sleep badly; and he’d broken up with Batman. Even though it would all come together eventually, right now it was torture. He was released into a world devoid of color: gray Gotham buildings, smog-filled sky. He had on a pair of brown pinstriped trousers held up by a plain black belt instead of suspenders, and it sat uncomfortably around his middle. His button-up was a plain ivory, no tie, his overcoat also brown. Boxy automobiles rushed by, and if he’d been inclined, he could have gotten a taxi; but the idea of interacting with strangers felt abhorrent to him. He walked till he got to the dead-end alley with the long-abandoned Zoinko’s Joke Shoppe that had become his first hideout. Harley would probably ambush him there at some point, but he’d contacted New Harley first, told her it was urgent; they needed to plan. He reached out to the creaking doorknob, but she’d heard his step, was running toward him before he even stepped over the threshold. He couldn’t help smiling as she threw herself into his arms.</p><p>“Daddy’s home,” he said softly. This was going to be hard—he knew she’d go along with any scheme of his, even if it meant she’d have to leave, but right now he just wanted to hold someone and not let go.</p><p>“I missed you so much,” she said, the words coming out smushed into his arm. She leaned back, her eyes raking over his strange face; something she’d never seen before except in the news. “Blegh,” she said. “I know you said it was freaky, but you didn’t say it was <em>ugly</em>!”</p><p>“I prefer, ‘artfully bland,’” Joker quipped. They stepped over to the couch, New Harley snuggling up next to him as he sat down.</p><p>“I’m working on a con,” Joker said. “It’s going to take a while, and you’re going to pretend to hate me.”</p><p>“What?” New Harley said, jumping up.</p><p>“Please, sit down,” Joker said. New Harley crossed her arms, but at his stony expression finally capitulated.</p><p>“I don’t like this plan,” she grumbled.</p><p>“You’re going to like it a lot less,” Joker said. “But you don’t have to like it, you just have to play your part.”</p><p>“…sure, Boss,” she said at last.</p><p>“Harleen Quinzel is on her way here,” Joker said. He took in New Harley’s shocked expression, the guilt filtering in right before the sense of utter loss.</p><p>“You… knew?”</p><p>“The whole time,” Joker said. “But if anyone asks, I didn’t. That’s how we’re going to play it. Harleen is a very perceptive psychiatrist, but there’s one thing that blinds her, and that’s her pathological need to control people. Right now, she wants to make up with the “cured” me, and she wants to believe that I was simply so insane that I didn’t notice an impostor stepped into her place—rather than believing the truth, which is that I found you, and <em>chose</em> you. Harley…” Joker paused. “I know you’re not Harleen. But from the moment you decided to be my Harley, you made that persona your own.”</p><p>Harley’s eyes filled with tears. “Thanks… mister J. I know I probably don’t measure up…”</p><p>“Don’t think that,” Joker said, sighing. “Just because you’re the second doesn’t mean you’re somehow <em>lesser</em>. I’m trusting you to carry out a very important plan because I believe you can pull it off. Am I right in doing that?”</p><p>Harley straightened up, eyes shining. “Yes,” she said, fervently.</p><p>“So here’s what you have to do…”</p><p>Half an hour later, Joker was wakened from his doze by Harley ‘s whisper. “Hey Boss. Proximity alarm off. She’s in.”</p><p>He opened his eyes and stood up in one motion, patting his pockets: then locked eyes with Harley. She nodded, and he took a deep breath.</p><p>“I owe you an apology,” Joker said, pitching his voice to carry and steering Harley to sit on the edge of the couch.</p><p>“An apology?” Harley asked, a credible look of dumb confusion crossing her face.</p><p>“For the way I’ve treated you over the years,” Joker said earnestly. “You were kind, supportive, and you tolerated a lot of crazy mood swings.”</p><p>“But the mood swings were my favorite part!” Harley piped up. Joker gave her a warning look; he’d been just getting into his speech and she was making him lose his place.</p><p>“No,” Joker said, dramatically. “It was a psychotic obsession with Batman, and you got caught in the middle.”</p><p>“Yeah, I did!” Harley said, an unhinged gleam in her eye, still smiling like a maniac. “Keep talkin’ cause you’re turning me on!”</p><p>Joker bit his lip to keep from smiling, took a deep breath and growled with a credible imitation of dangerous anger, “I’m not joking around!”</p><p>In the distance, he could hear the pad of animal feet; Harley, of course, was noiseless.</p><p>“Can’t you see how unhealthy it was?” Joker said. “I knew you loved me and I took advantage—I never said it back because it gave me power over you. But that’s all over. I’m through with Batman.” He reached to his inside pocket, kneeled down, and pulled out the ring he’d instructed Harley to buy and bring with her.</p><p>“I want to give you the version of me you always wanted,” Joker said.</p><p>Harley’s mouth trembled; her eyes brimmed with tears. It was exaggerated, but still, if he hadn’t known she was faking he would have believed it himself. Then she leaned back, flopping against the couch and laughing her guts out. “Nice try!” she said, gasping. “You might’ve fooled the courts, but you can’t fool me!”</p><p>He felt like he could feel Harleen’s shadow at his back, hiding. He’d thought she’d come out before this; tried to think of what else to say that she might need reassurance of, before she showed herself.</p><p>“Puddin’, I’m serious,” he said.</p><p>Lightning-fast, Harley’s fist slammed into his stomach, knocking him onto the floor. It was the kind of move they needed; something to escalate the situation, and he privately congratulated her.</p><p>“What did you just call me?” Harley shouted. As she harangued him for turning into a lovesick sucker, he sat up, careful to spill his bottle of pills across the floor as he did. It was only when Harley was on top of him, pinning him to the ground and screaming right in his ear, that Harleen finally chose to make an entrance—kicking Harley across the room and picking up the ring.</p><p>“Heya, Jack,” she said. “Apology accepted.”</p><p>She’d gotten into her costume, of course: probably afraid he wouldn’t recognize her otherwise. He couldn’t help but be amused that of the three of them, right now the only one who might credibly be pegged as a madwoman was the psychiatrist; wearing a full spandex suit and followed by two hyenas. She’d taken care of them, of course: Bud and Lou were as sleek and predatory as ever, prowling close to Harley with dangerous hunger.</p><p>“You?” Harley shrieked, cowering away from Bud and Lou. “You left!”</p><p>“And now I’m taking him back,” Harleen said, with a self-satisfied smile.</p><p>“He needs—” Harley started, but Harleen interrupted her before she could say anything else.</p><p>“A violent cheerleader with a bigger rack?” Her tone fairly dripped with disdain. “I don’t think so. And don’t get me <em>started</em> on the clothes. Kind of a step back for feminism.” It rang in his ears like <em>Without all that makeup he’s actually good looking! </em>and <em>Do you think they wouldn’t tell me, if my son was acting like a</em>— He closed his eyes, sagging against Harleen who lifted him against her shoulder, one hand possessively against his chest. Break anyone down to their component parts and you can find something to dehumanize them with. “Get it straight, sister,” Harleen spat. “You love Joker. I love Jack. You loved his flaws, I love him <em>despite</em> his flaws. And now that he’s cured, he’s mine.”</p><p>He felt like laughing. His stomach hurt; blood was pouring from his nose, and he had to bite his tongue until he could keep from laughing, because it was so tragic, so humorously tragic. She might as well have said it straight to his face: she never <em>had</em> loved him at all.</p>
<hr/><p>“Home sweet home!” Harleen announced, throwing her arms wide as she showed him into her apartment.</p><p>“Wow,” Joker said, flatly. It was a small, open floor plan; not so different from some of the places he’d stayed over the years; but none of the glasses in the wine-rack were chipped or broken, and the refrigerator was humming. The bare bricks were unpainted, and there wasn’t a spot of color in the whole place: not even a wilted cup of flowers. “It’s very…” he paused, unable to think of anything to say. Behind him, he could hear Harleen pulling off her cowl and unzipping the top section of her suit to leave only the spaghetti strap part underneath. At last, he settled with, “…normal.”</p><p>They got settled, Joker perching uncomfortably on the edge of one of the kitchen stools. “Tea?” Harleen asked. Instead of saying, <em>You know I like coffee, the sweeter the better</em> he asked, “you drink tea?” It played up his state of helpless amnesia. He felt like he was sitting in the house with a stranger. Joker had expected their reunion to make him feel something, but all he’d felt, ever since she’d dragged him out onto the street, was numb.</p><p>“I always drank tea,” Harleen answered, without turning around. She spoke flatly, but the bitterness underneath it was clear. “One of the many things you never bothered to notice.”</p><p>“So…” Joker said, into the awkward silence. “You left me. And an <em>entirely new</em> Harley took over? Why didn’t I notice?”</p><p>Harleen, of course, had an answer ready at hand. “You’re a narcissist who suffers from dysthymia and a schizoid personality disorder. Likely made worse by a chemical imbalance, which is why the medication is working. You’re probably not cured, but with the right support, you <em>could</em> be.” She looked down at the table, smiling, pushing her hand back through her dyed-blonde hair. It all fit so <em>neatly</em>, didn’t it. Joker had been diagnosed with pretty much everything in the book, by one doctor or another. They all got that same smug look on their face: you see? I figured you out. You ought to thank me.</p><p>The kettle on the table whistled, and Harleen got up to pour him tea in his plain white mug.</p><p>“I’m a psychiatrist, remember?” she said, mistaking his silence for awe.</p><p>Truthfully, the diagnoses said more about Harleen than it did about Joker. Sure: Narcissist, perhaps, he could relate to. But to label him dysthymic scrolled right over every good stretch he’d ever had. His depression was always sporadic, and the one thing he could comfort himself with was that he’d soon find himself on the mend again, as happy as a clam; he always did. Perhaps memory, always apt to pick out the worst in a former partner, especially after a bad break-up (and it didn’t get much worse than <em>Robin</em>) could string his lethargies into a continuous whole. <em>Schizoid</em> stung, though. He had a zest for life, he always enjoyed what he did, or he wouldn’t <em>do</em> it. Harleen had felt he was emotionally unavailable; and comforted herself that it couldn’t have had anything to do with the mess their relationship had become, in the end. The parts that did “fit” were all wrong: because he didn’t want to have sex with her, she labeled it an aberration caused by a disorder. Because he loved Batman, she linked it with erotomania.</p><p><em>You’re all wrong</em>, he wanted to shout. <em>We</em> do <em>have a relationship</em>— …or <em>did</em>, anyway.</p><p>Why had he broken up with Batman, again? It had all seemed so simple, from the security of his planning desk.</p><p><em>I’m just switching it up</em>, he reminded himself. <em>Making</em> him <em>come to</em> me <em>for a change</em>.</p><p>He didn’t drink his tea. Asked, instead, what it was he’d done to make her leave. Not only to establish the limits of his new persona, but to hurt her; because he knew telling him about it <em>would</em> hurt.</p><p>She didn’t tell him all at once. Lead in with her own story: he was easy to love, and loving him made her feel free. It was, of course, the adventure she’d always craved; what had driven her to take a job at Arkham, to study the criminally insane in the first place. He’d only lead her to admit what she’d felt all along: that she didn’t want to be a voyeur; she wanted to be <em>out</em> there, with the action, rolling the dice, joining the game as an equal player.</p><p>“I don’t know if you ever loved me,” Harleen said, playing with the tag at the end of her teabag. She was lost in thought, not looking at him; and without the need to guard his expression he didn’t have to hide the hurt he felt at those words. “…Wasn’t sure if you were even capable of love.”</p><p>The worst thing was, he still loved her, even now. He’d never figured out how to stop.</p><p>“I didn’t care,” Harleen continued, thickly. She took a sip of tea, holding the mug in her hands, staring down at the counter. “But your obsession with Batman kept growing. I felt as if I was sharing you.” She took a deep, shaking breath; letting it out in a slow sigh. “I struggled to get your attention as you struggled to get Batman’s. And that’s when I realized you were in love… it just wasn’t with me.”</p><p>She told him Robin had never given up Batman’s identity, till the end. Jason <em>had</em>, only she’d never known that. She said she’d tried to give the kid medical attention before she started shouting after him, but he remembered; she’d backed away up the stars without even trying to free him. It was what had broken Jason, in the end.</p><p>“The man I loved was no longer there—it was just the Joker. And I hated him for <em>destroying</em> you.”</p><p>She looked up at last, and Joker took a sip of his tea, staring blankly back. <em>Who did you think you fell in love with?</em> he wondered. <em>You never met “Jack” until after</em>.</p><p>There was only one more piece to set in place, one more question he had to ask her. “Did Joker murder Robin?”</p><p>The answer, of course, was one only <em>he</em> knew.</p><p>It was enough. Harleen pitied him; more than that, she was convinced her serum had worked. They left the apartment, climbed out the fire escape and up onto the roof, till they could look out on the whole endless city, sleeping its poisoned dreams. When he spoke of rebelling, turning Gotham against Batman, villainizing him, she heard only his carefully crafted words of meting out justice and exposing corruption. All she needed him to say was that he couldn’t do it without her.</p><p>“You ready to be good guys for a while?” Joker asked. Harleen reached up, hugging him, and he brought her close. He hadn’t forgotten the way she smelled, the way she felt; that piece of him he hadn’t noticed he was missing. <em>I’m sorry</em>, he thought. <em>I’m sorry it can’t last forever, even with you</em>.</p><p>From somewhere across the layered rooftops, behind blinds casting barred shadows over their reflection, a song had begun to play. Slow and faint, but still distinct, it traveled with the soot from chimneys, wound its way around them, up on the edge of the roof, and faded into the dark abyss.</p><p>
  <em>“You always hurt the one you love <br/>
The one you shouldn't hurt at all, <br/>
You always take the sweetest rose <br/>
And crush it till the petals fall…”</em>
</p><p>He kissed her, softly, on the mouth. “Let’s go inside,” he whispered; took her unresisting hand, and lead her down.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harley managed everything perfectly, of course; Joker tolerated nothing less than perfection from either of his henchgirls. When he’d lured Clayface in, Harley was dragging Hatter by the trouser cuff. Joker placed Hatter’s cards into Clayface’s immobilized body, thrilled at the feeling of limitless power at his fingertips. From the ground, Hatter mumbled a section from Carrol’s <em>Four Riddles</em>: “a mountain-summit, and a den, of dark and deadly mazes—”</p><p>It was meant for him, surely; and though he was outwardly dismissive of the words for Harley’s sake, it stuck in his mind, as Hatter must have known it would.</p><p>Even during the meeting he set up, inviting all the other villains. He’d counted on their natural curiosity to bring them. After all, here he was, pretending to be cured, and the first thing he does is call a meeting of the criminal elements. It was the usual place for such a meeting; a warehouse, dim-lit and large enough to hold both a central span of tables and a contingent of guards brought along by anyone who wanted; standing and chatting in low voices, guns held casually in case there were to be any trouble. He’d tried to wash off the stain of <em>gangster</em>, but it followed him, and in his nondescript suit with a single spot of color in his striped lavender tie, he felt more like one than ever.</p><p>For a fleeting moment, Joker wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn’t hung around the wrong dive, so many years ago, trying to tell the greatest joke; if he’d never met Joe, never gotten into crime; never betrayed Jeannie—</p><p><em>Never met Batman</em>, his mind supplied. <em>It was worth it</em>.</p><p><em>…It</em> has <em>to be</em>.</p><p>All of a sudden, the answer to Hatter’s reference revealed itself to him, as another section from the riddles flashed into his mind:</p><p>
  <em>“…And here one offered to a thirsty fair<br/>(His words half-drowned amid those thunders tuneful)<br/>Some frozen viand (there were many there),<br/>A tooth-ache in each spoonful.”</em>
</p><p>Tetch knew what he planned, that was the only explanation, Joker thought, as he watched the other villains drink. He’d gotten them each their favorite, so that no one would demur; it was all sealed, to the eye of the casual observer. No one was on guard. None of them, perhaps, thought even <em>he</em> would dare something so brazen, even knowing him as they did.</p><p>No one but Tetch, and Joker would have to figure out if he was a problem that had to be eliminated. He hoped not. Even time hadn’t made killing any less distasteful, only easier.</p><hr/><p>The law offices of Hill &amp; Hill had seen better days. Now, the crumbling concrete steps curved upward like a spar from the wreckage, and Joker had to hop over a gap to get into the remains of the upper office; the front wall blown off, the roof sagging and splintered. Harleen, who climbed up behind him, updated him on the state of the plan—everything as he expected of course; it was simple in theory, though the execution had taken some work. Overwhelm the cops, lure Batman into a trap—and call attention away from what they should have been paying attention to—<em>him</em>. While Joker opened the file cabinets, searching through pages pressed-together and yellowing, Harleen took the Hatter-tech headband from her head, holding it between her finger and thumb. He paid only half attention to her as she said, “you knew this would work. Predicted almost every detail—that’s amazing.”</p><p>He pulled out the file he was looking for. “I can’t take credit,” Joker said, modestly. “It’s a gift from the Joker—whose genius was limited only by his insanity.”</p><p>“If only he could see you now,” Harleen said; walking up behind him; she slipped the headband into her purse. He couldn’t look at her; felt sure that if he did, he would either snarl or laugh; instead he only answered, holding the fragile sheets in his hand. This—this was <em>everything</em>. Everything he could finally use to prove that Gotham was <em>ordinary</em>, was no different than any other corrupt city; its own secrets, buried in ink, would detangle its mythology, show them for the faded superstitions that they were.</p><p>“Hopefully he can’t,” Joker said vehemently. “Hopefully he’s <em>gone for good</em>.” And for one vertiginous instant, he believed his own words; the sound echoing back to him as though spoken by someone else. He stared down at his hands and pressed a distortion into the clean, printed white. <em>I’m such a liar</em>, he thought. <em>Can’t anyone see through it but Batman? Why does only he, out of everyone, know me so well? What gives him the </em>right?</p><p>/</p><p>He made the speech before Batman could put it together, come up with anything to say or do that could defeat his persuasion. He’d always been fond of television, of radio—it had been how he first announced himself to the world as <em>Joker</em>, and it was how he would build his reputation as <em>Jack Napier</em> as well. And now, curling its way through the airwaves, his lies took flight, too plausible, too terrible to be doubted. The truth they hid was a different one, but hidden they had been, and the people of Gotham would grab onto the first possible conspiracy to explain it all, and look no further, search for no harder truth—the coward curse of the masses.</p><p>“—hundreds of people injured by Batman. Who pays their medical costs once the smoke clears? Who pays to fix their houses? Or the roads, bridges and playgrounds surrounding them?”</p><p><em>Batman. Bruce Wayne. He might be demented in his own right, but let no one say he doesn’t have a sense of fairness; of crippling guilt</em>.  </p><p>“Batman diverted the battle… to protect the rich… destroying the library…” He made the speech in front of the rubble, clouds of smoke behind him, the library he had taken great pains to design to the utmost of every safety specification, knowing that nothing would stand against the combined forces of Croc and Bane. His tie was bright orange with a few stripes of black across it; Batman’s own colors turned against him; a wish to help, a zeal for justice; it filled the air in front of him, heady.</p><p>“I know many of you don’t trust me. That no matter what I say, I’ll always be the Joker. But I’m also your best bet in holding Batman accountable. <em>No one</em> knew Batman like the Joker—let me <em>help</em> this city by using the insights he has given me. Let’s turn the Joker’s abilities into Gotham’s advantage, and stand up against the plague Batman has brought us.”</p><p>“That was inspired,” Harleen said, after. She smirked at him. “I think we came off pretty well, didn’t we? Even Gotham can’t resist a loving couple.” She hooked her hand into his, swinging it, though she kept her steps sedate.</p><p>“If half of it is you?” he asked, smiling slightly. “Baby, we’re unstoppable.”</p><p>“And don’t you forget it!” Harleen said, raising their arms into a cheer. Beyond the span of the reporters, the police, the watching crowd, in the sectioned-off lot they’d parked their car, she twirled on her toes, squealing with delight as she came to rest in his arms.</p><hr/><p>He tossed and turned at night. Somehow, Joker had forgotten how to sleep with Harleen: perhaps it was that Harleen was too clingy, or snored the wrong way; or maybe it was the fault of the steroids in the pills she’d given him; he couldn’t curl himself into a ball comfortably any more, arms and legs all pressed against his chest. He felt a kind of weary ache deep in his bones that made him want to weep, and Hatter’s rhyme kept playing in his head.</p><p>
  <em>“I need a poet's pen <br/>To paint her myriad phases: <br/>The monarch, and the slave, of men— <br/>A mountain-summit, and a den <br/>Of dark and deadly mazes—”</em>
</p><p>The plan was proceeding just as he wanted, but somehow even that fact couldn’t cheer him. <em>Imagination</em>, that was the answer to the riddle, but he couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to <em>mean</em>. Tomorrow, he and Harleen were meeting with Duke Thomas to give a speech in Backport, one that hopefully, Batman would crash.</p><p>Was it a warning? Was he making a den of mazes to lose himself in? It felt like every morning when he looked in the mirror, he recognized himself less. His eyes had a jaded look to them. Even with the brown the change was clear.</p><p>Joker paced back and forth in the front of the apartment, Bud and Lou’s tawny heads following his motion at every turn, though they sat curled up in the corner, seemingly content. In the corner of the room, the radio crackled, some Frank Sinatra song he could barely hear over the noise. Harleen was in the bathroom, putting on her makeup. He’d already finished getting ready, something that still surprised him, dully, though it had been so long since this all began.</p><p>
  <em>“What now my love, now that you've left me<br/>How can I live through another day<br/>Watching my dreams turn to ashes<br/>And my hopes turn to bits of clay?”</em>
</p><p>He was wearing his new usual: plain, simple, utterly boring. No tie for even a splash of color, no coat: he was being a <em>man’s man</em>, today. Harleen turned on the sink and the sound seemed to shriek its way through his pounding head. He went to the single small window and wrenched up the glass, climbing out onto the fire escape. That’s where Harleen found him, when she finally left the bathroom.</p><p>“Jack?” she said, warily.</p><p>He grunted. He had his head down between his knees, his hands clutched in his hair, mussing the job he’d done of combing and slicking it down.</p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>“It was too close in there,” Joker said flatly. Everything he said sounded flat these days; flat and lifeless, like a washed-out rag.</p><p>Harleen hesitated. “We have to go if we want to get to the rally,” she said at last, cautiously.</p><p>“Yeah,” Joker said. “Yeah, I know.” He pasted on a smile, hidden where she couldn’t see, and breathed until he could imagine getting up, moving at all. Then he wiped the smile off his face and stood up, climbing awkwardly through the window and brushing the dust off his pants.</p><p>“You sure you don’t want to change?” Harleen said.</p><p>Joker waved a hand at her dismissively. “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Let’s just get this over with.”</p><p>He let her fix his hair in the back of the car; Harleen, in her trousers and shirt to match with his, and her red trenchcoat. What a pair they made. He almost laughed, and bit his cheek instead.</p><p>“Something happen?”</p><p>“Hair in my eye,” he lied, pushing hers back behind her ear. “You’re doing fine.”</p><p>She smiled at him, and he smiled back, thinly, without teeth.</p><hr/><p>Batman did come, of course; he did all the work of digging his own grave. Joker just threw the dirt in after him, speaking with James Gordon, coming up with an idea to enlist the superheroes and the GCPD under one banner. He was doing it to split the Batfamily apart, and Harleen thought he was a <em>hero</em>. Of all things.</p><p><em>Puddin’</em>, she said. <em>Take me out tonight</em>.</p><p>He should have been able to come up with an excuse, but after Duke’s jesting taunt, there was no way he could brush her off without making her feel jilted.</p><p>They went to a jazz club and danced until his polite smile pained him, to an ice cream parlor where her jokes made him chuckle until he had to turn away, for fear of laughing. They played billiards—Harleen showing herself to her advantage, and Joker feeling a kind of fondness in his chest like nostalgia. He <em>had</em> loved her, once.</p><p>They ate and drank at a restaurant, while Harleen teased him with her bare feet dragging up his leg; tolerable if only for the fact that she’d learned subtlety, and ended the night at a bar, after closing time, when he couldn’t put off copulation any longer. She was drunk, and so she’d paint the act in a rosy light, come dawn.</p><p>He <em>had</em> loved her, once—he <em>knew</em> he had. He just wasn’t sure he did anymore.</p><p>Early in the morning, lying in bed, she sprung it on him, the question he’d barely feared to dread; dangling that ring in front of his eyes again.</p><p>“Marry me, Jack,” she said, sliding the ring onto his finger; with a hopeful, beautiful smile, something as shining as stars gracing Gotham through the dark.</p><p>And he couldn’t say no.</p><hr/><p>He had a dream that night; wandering through the twisted remains of buildings, of calculated destruction. The law offices yawned empty, its broken-down stone washed the same silt-brown as the dust, the color of the air at noon. He climbed up the broken steps, needing to find the secret that would destroy Batman once and for all; but inside, the offices was only the skeleton of the library he’d started to build, rubble spilling over the standing beams; sunlight slanting through the cracks. The walls were full of mirrors; full-length mirrors standing in the hall, some with gilt frames, some with cheap aluminum, some painted wood. He didn’t step foot inside, but watched, for someone was already there.</p><p>He saw himself in each mirrored reflection, green hair curled or straight, long or short; cherry suits and black suits and lavender and lemon. Some were laughing, facing him, others turned away; soft with leaf-bright eyes, or hard with a yellow glow; pinpricks of red in the darkness; or his own ordinary brown. Male and female, young and old, in every place and time known to man. In the middle he saw himself, with two-colored eyes, one purple one green, singing softly, dancing through each reflection, pulling it behind him as he went, until there was only one left; swaying on his feet in his unlaced sneakers, dancing as though with an invisible partner. His green fishnets climbed up his skinny ankles under too-short suit pants held up by suspenders, and a purple Batman t-shirt, soft and ragged and worn. He waved his arm as though directing an orchestra, twirled around and bowed in his own direction.</p><p>“Jack! How good of you to join us.”</p><p>There was something unsettlingly knowing in the Joker’s eyes, Joker thought. That stripe of black tracing its way down his face was like a gash, as though the face itself might fall off, be itself only a mask stapled over an endless darkness.</p><p>Joker smiled in return, but warily; when he stepped into the room the boards beneath him popped and buckled, as though about to give way.</p><p>“How’s normal life treating you?”</p><p>Joker only shook his head.</p><p>“It’s a burden, isn’t it?” Joker said, cannily. He circled Joker until the back of his neck prickled; and he laughed, once, in answer; but tiredly.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Joker said, putting his hands in his pocket; his ring caught on the edge and he had to shove it in deeply; he could see Joker following the motion, noticing the glint of white and gold.</p><p>“<em>Are</em> you,” Joker said. “Be careful, when you knock down the building you’re standing in, that you don’t get the emergency exit with it.”</p><p>“I don’t know what you…” Joker started, then saw the line of others leaving, out the metal door with the blaring sign above. “Where are you going?”</p><p>One Joker tipped his hat at him as he passed; most did not even acknowledge him. A few laughed, brightly, the sounds echoing even past the ring of the door falling shut with a slam. Then he lost his footing, in the rumbling of falling stones and bricks; the walls caved in at all angles, a shower of glass.</p><hr/><p>Calling out the gatekeepers on social media felt <em>fun</em>. Felt a bit like his early Joker crimes; the ones where bystanders might be hit with a fit of laughter that brightened their day and would wear off by the time he got away with the loot. In, out, a few well placed puns, and he was <em>free</em>.</p><p>He’d forgotten what that felt like: that feeling of buoyancy; that the world was open to him; that he could do anything, if he really tried. When had it faded? When had the world become so caught in lockstep, when had his acts become so meticulously planned, down to the letter, that there was no more room for improvisation? For humor, and silly gags?</p><p>That <em>power</em>! It was intoxicating.</p><p>“What are you grinning about?” Harleen said, slipping an arm around his neck. He was sitting on a kitchen stool, legs crossed, leaning against it, and she had hopped up behind him; his fingers stopped moving on his phone for one moment, and he turned to her, eyes shining. “Just having a laugh…”</p><p>Harleen peered down at the screen, a smile tugging its way along the corner of her mouth. “It’s good to see you <em>happy</em>, Jack. It’s good to see you inspired again… using your brilliance for something other than taunting Batman.”</p><p>“Instead, I’ll just taunt the mayor,” Joker said, pressing <em>post</em>. “And everyone dumb enough to fall for his rhetoric.”</p><p>A few of Gotham’s top socialites had waded into the fray, onto to retreat, licking their wounds, from his cuttingly humorous remarks. He’d hoped—he admitted it to himself—that perhaps Bruce Wayne might find it in him to join the fight; but the Bat was silent. Had been for almost two months now.</p><p>It was only from a meme posted by Batgirl’s civilian identity, tagging Nightwing: ‘<em>Al would have loved this</em>.’ <em>‘... Yeah. He would have</em>.’ —that Joker finally put it together. Searched the back issues of the Gotham Times a few weeks to find the small obituary for <em>Alfred Pennyworth</em>.</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He called from the hallway, on the apartment landline. Three rings, and New Harley picked up the phone.</p><p>“Knock, knock,” Joker said, smiling.</p><p>There was a squeal of recognition. “Mister J! It’s been ages,” Harley pouted.</p><p>“Sorry, kiddo,” Joker said. “It’s been hectic. You have to be on 24/7 to catch a bat in a trap!” He laughed a little, giddily.</p><p>“Still. You couldn’t’a called?”</p><p>“Now <em>Harley</em>,” Joker said reprovingly. “You know I can’t contact you more than necessary. All we need is one little slip-up to make this come down on our heads.”</p><p>Harley sighed. “I know, Boss. You’ve been doing great too; I’ve seen all the speeches… with you both.” There was a short pause, then she continued, cheerily, “So what’s up?”</p><p>“It’s time, I think, for a little demonstration,” Joker said, holding the curled cord between his fingers, stretching it like a rubber band. “How do you feel about attacking the GCPD?”</p><p>He could hear her answering grin even through the static. “<em>Now</em> you’re talkin’.”</p><hr/><p>The air of Gotham was red with oncoming night when the attack hit. Brutal, efficient, without any of the usual puns and taunts: that’s what you got when using a mind-controlled army. They did only what they were ordered and nothing more. It was reported live; and for days afterward the footage of the batsignal being torn from the GCPD roof and thrown, soaring, off the edge, as Batman threw himself after Commissioner Gordon, was shown. It was impossible to avoid, and Joker couldn’t help the unwanted sting of anguish he felt at the repeated image.</p><p><em>If anyone was going to tear that thing off, it should have been me,</em> he thought; and then <em>nobody should have torn that thing off. How will Batman find his way anymore, without his flashlight?</em> That was the point, of course. He was <em>trying</em> to tear Batman down; so far, so fast, so inexorably that he wouldn’t be able to get up again. And it wouldn’t be the kind of thing Batman could point to and say, <em>this, all this was the Joker’s fault</em>. No: it would be his allies, it would be his city, even his own conscience. Nothing to grab hold of, nothing to fight against, only his own shadow.</p><p>He pretended to use the Hatter’s headband, letting Old Harley piece together her own version of events—placing the blame square on New Harley as the instigator of the attack. She came into the room, hopping into her shoes. “She figured you out, Jack!” she said frantically. “She hijacked your plan and she obviously intends to <em>steal you back from me!</em>”</p><p>“Why don’t you let him decide for himself?”</p><p>Just in time, New Harley—<em>Neo Joker</em>, as she called herself, made her entrance. She was dressed in lavender and black, a tear of makeup running down her cheek, out the other side of her mouth like a rivulet of blood. It was the first time he’d seen her in months, and when he did, his breath caught. She was <em>beautiful</em>. She came into his space while Croc strangled him on her command. She’d cut her hair shorter; it was now Harleen’s length, and a pale purple to match her suit. A red rose adorned the buttonhole of her black coat. She played the part of villain to perfection, while he played wounded hero:</p><p>“I’m sorry for what happened between us—I wish I could take it all back. But I’m not the man you’re looking for,” Joker said, defiantly. “Not anymore.” He looked up under his lashes, willing her to keep to the plan; what if she doubted?</p><p>She crouched down before him, pulled up his chin with one purple-gloved hand. The thumb traced gently across his jaw; but her grip was unyielding. “You’re wrong,” she said, with pure, unwavering belief. Her eyes met his, and for a moment, he almost reached out to her, despite the danger. <em>She knew</em>. <em>She</em> saw <em>him</em>. After that, he could play the rest with ease; he could even pull away. “I just need to draw him out,” Neo Joker explained. “By doing what he never could—by taking control of Gotham. His <em>massive ego</em> won’t allow me to surpass him.”</p><p>Old Harley came to him, put her arm around him protectively, and he clenched his fists. “He already <em>took</em> Gotham—” Joker growled, “<em>by becoming me!</em> The city is mine and I’m not going to give her up.” Not <em>yet</em>, anyhow—certainly to no upstart—not to anyone but Batman. Perhaps… perhaps not <em>even</em> to Batman. No. What was he thinking—to believe <em>his own lies</em>, even for a moment? Why, that would be <em>crazy! </em>What had society ever <em>given</em> him, what had <em>Gotham</em>, that he would want to keep any of it?</p><p>“You won’t have a choice, Jack,” Neo Joker said.</p><p>And she strode out undaunted, with her goons in tow, truly her own woman, for the first time he’d known her. He let out his breath in a shudder, feeling lightheaded—though maybe some of that was just from getting strangled. Did he love her? Dare he? Joker in love with Joker—the ultimate expression of narcissism, if anything was. Perhaps he only yearned to <em>be</em> her, with every fiber of his being, wanted to paint those pastel shades onto the empty canvas of his clothes.</p><hr/><p>“Wonderful performance, Harley!” Joker said, the moment the other end picked up. “Did you get what you needed?”</p><p>There was silence, for a moment; a few breaths magnified and distorted through the phone.</p><p>“Harley?” Joker said. “Hel-ooo? Anyone home?”</p><p>“Sorry, Mister J!” Neo Joker said. “It’s been a long night; I’m kinda tired…”</p><p>“I’ll bet!” Joker chuckled fondly. “Well?” he said suddenly, snapping. “Did you get it or not?”</p><p>“I got everything,” Neo Joker assured him. “The plans are nuts, honestly… how did you know we’d find them?”</p><p>Joker laughed. “That’s the kicker! I didn’t! Oh, I knew they had <em>something</em> hidden in those archives, of course—there was too much evidence of GCPD having some kind of terrible secret in their history—but I didn’t know what it would be. …So what are they?”</p><p>“A freeze gun,” Neo Joker explained. “A big one; big enough to encase half the city if you were able to turn it on. Not built by Freeze, but his father, a Nazi who was brought over for his expertise, at the beginning of Project Paperclip.”</p><p>“Eugh,” Joker said. “Well, he can’t help who his father was, but I feel sorry for having to live with <em>that</em> in the family!”</p><p>“…Quinzel’s Jewish, isn’t she,” Neo Joker said after a moment.</p><p>“Uh… yes?” Joker scratched his head, wondering what had brought that up.</p><p>“It’s just funny,” Neo Joker said. “I forget, sometimes, that you have limits, like any man.”</p><p>“Oh, everyone does, now and then,” Joker assured her. “I’ve spent years convincing the public I’ll do <em>anything</em>; the reputation’s more terrifying than any man could be.”</p><p>There was a soft breath, like a sigh. “It’s hard, being Joker. Trying to figure out what to do—how to act—”</p><p>“How insane should you be? Little or lots? What do you steal? Who do you gotta kill?” he said, humorously. “It’s a balancing act—believe me, I know.”</p><p>“How do you do it?” Neo Joker asked.</p><p>“Ah-ah-ah,” even though she couldn’t see the motion, Joker wagged his finger. “You can’t ask someone else. It’s the kind of joke that just <em>comes</em> to you! —but I will give you a little hint: <em>never</em> give them what they expect.”</p><hr/><p>He still had dramatics to fall back on; enjoyed the look on Batgirl and Nightwing’s faces as he showed them the GCPD building he had outfitted, replete with everything from a new batsignal of his very own design to a garage full of cars and tech.</p><p>“In a way, I have more respect for Batman than any of you,” Joker explained, Harleen at his side, leading the way down the stairs around the corner of the building, their shadows lost in the darkness under the artificial glare of lamps. “But he’s refusing to see reality. He’s not adapting.” At the sealed door he paused, turned to face the semicircle waiting for his next words, for him to throw open the curtain for the final act.</p><p><em>Do you see what I’m doing, Batman?</em> He thought. <em>I’m becoming you. You can’t stop me; you can barely keep up. Letting it all slip from your hands, too distracted by your obsessions</em>.</p><p>Joker had pressed his fingers against the shape of the insignia, dark-glittering metal with a beam of light waiting behind it, as yet unformed. When it had turned on, the brightness stunned him, even turned away as he was to hide his eyes from the glare. He felt—as the two crime-fighters showed up, their faces moving through shock, anger, and bewilderment to see him beside Gordon—as though he had birthed a perfect, monstrous inversion of the truth, had taken reality and made it cohere to his own beliefs through sheer force of will. Unlike other times, there would be no Batman coming to haul him back to Arkham; no doctors telling him he had it all wrong. No: the public was behind him, the doctors had been fooled; Gordon had been worn down, and even the Bat’s partners were almost in the palm of his hand.</p><p>In the massive garage, a Batcave without the cave and only two wary little bats, he explained the whole thing—threw the keys back to Batgirl’s hand without even looking behind him, hearing her intake of breath as she caught it. “Best part of all—you each get your own batmobile.”</p><p>First wear down their faith in Batman, then win them over with gifts. He’d never met anyone, no matter how noble they claimed to be, that was immune to a bribe.</p><p>It just had to be the right one.</p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He let Harleen see him down the pills, so she’d have to come face to face with the reaction, the blood coughed onto his hand as though he was the swooning Victorian maiden, wasting away from consumption. It was a poetic image, dashingly tragic, a little bit of fantasy to spice up the dullness his life had become. He wanted to fight her, so he asked her to train him: he wanted to fight <em>Batman</em>, but Harleen was what he had on hand. For a while, the soaring of adrenaline in his veins made it easy to forget. Forget he wasn’t running through the streets—forget he wasn’t pulling off a successful heist—forget he wasn’t the playing the Joker anymore. He <em>wanted</em> to fight her, but the more he did, the more he was afraid he might actually hurt her; that he might actually <em>want</em> to. He couldn’t talk to her, he couldn’t fight, he couldn’t move, for it was like treading on a beam, far above the ground. It was the most he could do not to look down.</p><p>She got him in the face, where he’d asked her not to; payback for all the punches he’d once thrown her way. It annoyed him; it was the only stipulation he’d given. If she wanted to hurt him she could have pummeled him until he was nothing but bruises, she could have twisted his ankle, broken his arm, gotten really creative and pulled his fingers backward till they snapped, one by one. He wouldn’t have begrudged her one good shot; they had enough anger between them, simmering ever closer to boiling—perhaps it might have even helped.</p><p>But instead, she went for his face.</p><p>“You think Batman is gonna <em>avoid</em> your pretty face?” she taunted him; there was steel in her eyes and something icy in her voice. He couldn’t answer her question, couldn’t even <em>begin</em> to answer the anger behind it, warranted and unwarranted. Instead he gave her logic.</p><p>“I’m a <em>councilman</em> now! Elected by the people of Backport.”</p><p>It didn’t impress her.</p><p>“So?” Harleen asked, boredly, pressing her foot against his windpipe.</p><p>“So how’s it gonna look if I have a <em>black eye</em>?” he spat.</p><p>“Eh, quit yer whining and go put on yer makeup,” Harleen said, finally putting her foot down on the floor without going for his throat, the way he’d almost thought she might. “And don’t tell me you’ve <em>forgotten how</em>.”</p><p>He almost broke her ankle, right then and there. Beyond any other taunt, that one was aimed to hurt. <em>What, doubting my story</em>? He knew she wasn’t—not really, or she’d have called him on it already. Was <em>disgusted</em>, then. <em>The poor amnesiac, can’t remember how to do</em> anything.</p><p>There wasn’t anything he wanted <em>more</em> than to put on his makeup, to play with the colors and shapes. She said it like an <em>insult</em>, though, because to Jack, of course, it ought to be.</p><p><em>Do you think they wouldn’t tell me, if my son was acting like a</em>—</p><p>The tears glittering in his eyes could be brushed aside as sweat, and he got up before she could look at him, put on his shirt with sharp movements, the collar almost strangling him. “I’m sure I’ll manage somehow,” he said thinly; and walked out the door.</p>
<hr/><p>They had a balcony at their new apartment; Batman knew it, of course, and Joker saw his silhouette through the frosted glass. He stood still, fearing impossibly that the caped crusader was nothing more than a mirage—though he could hear Batman’s lowered voice, talking with Harley, pleading for her help. He sagged against the wall, barely a few feet from his nemesis, took heaving gulps of air and tried to remind himself not to throw open the door, to go running out to Batman, to fall prostrate at his feet, tell him he’d been right all along. It didn’t <em>work</em> if Joker got desperate before Batman did; it was all for <em>nothing</em> if he was the one who had to crawl back.</p><p>“Jack is <em>not</em> a villain anymore,” Harleen said, her pure, pleading tone rising clear into the air. Joker closed his eyes and listened. “And whatever his sins, he’s put the city on the right track. I’m begging you to let it go. Before it’s too late for you.”</p><p>There was a sudden crash that sounded like bricks flying under Batman’s fist. “Am I the <em>only one who hasn’t lost his mind</em>?” Batman yelled, sounding more delightfully unhinged than Joker had ever heard him. “Can’t you all see that <em>violent, psychotic maniac</em> for who he really is?”</p><p>Joker smiled, his grin stretching wide on his face; the whole world seemed to expand with possibility. Just hearing the effect he was having on Batman, merely by <em>not being there</em>, not playing by the rules, was heady.</p><p>“Oh, we’ll have some fun before the end, my dear, dark knight,” he whispered under his breath. “Just you wait… and see.”</p><p>Only after the <em>hiss</em> of Batman’s grapple had signaled his departure did Joker stride nonchalantly onto the balcony. Harleen had her back to him; her head bowed. “I’ve never heard him yell like that,” Joker said calmly. “I must really be getting to him.”</p><p>“Stop it,” Harleen said.</p><p>“What?” Joker asked mildly. He walked over, arms crossed casually, to stand beside her, back to the rail, leaning against it. She turned away as he came near, as though she couldn’t even bear to be close to him anymore. He played his fingers around the engagement ring on his hand, tying them together: round and round it went.</p><p>“I meant everything I said,” she said, tiredly. “That maybe if you two weren’t so stubborn, you’d realize how <em>similar</em> you’ve become.”</p><p><em>We’ve always been the same,</em> Joker thought, kindly. Harleen had never understood. Nobody had; not really; no one but the two of them, and even that seemed to wax and wane like the moon.</p>
<hr/><p>It was brilliant. Of course, what else could be expected, with a team like the GTO—one Joker had created to <em>be</em> brilliant—enough to beat the Batman himself? Watching the Batmobiles collide, the sleek older version against the armored tank, the crash as it was overturned, in a pile of groaning smoke and metal, ploughing into a telephone pole, the wires falling to the ground, looping like a noose. Batman, with blood pouring across his suit, jumping off the edge without bothering to unhook his grapple at all, landing in the winding, mazelike alleys, where the searchlights far above couldn’t penetrate. He landed like a wounded thing; no grace to him; finished. And still got to his knees, batarang in hand. That was what Joker admired about him. He never <em>stopped</em>. Not ever when he should. Not even when it would be easier. Not when the whole city screamed recrimination at him. It was in those moments that he shone brightest; nothing but his purest self stripped to the raw, aching heart.</p><p>“You know,” Joker said, from the shadows, “you’re not easy to get over. Oh, don’t get the wrong idea, my dear Bat, I’m still rooting for you. It’s the least I can do to repay my biggest fan.” He walked out into the pallid, red-streaked light of a dawn lit by factory fires. Without a word, brutally, Batman stumbled close to him, put the blade beneath his chin, a warning. <em>Why shouldn’t I? Give me one good reason</em>. Would he really do it, now? Kill the Joker—as Jack, an ordinary, unarmed man?</p><p>Joker didn’t think he could. Even if he was angry, hated the Joker enough, the Bat’s chivalry was too strong.</p><p>“Wouldn’t you rather beat me the old-fashioned way?” Joker said, quietly. He met Batman’s wounded, lost eyes; met it with a soft smile, a moment of connection for the Bat to grab hold of. “One more dance? …For old time’s sake.”</p><p>The utility belt was thrown to the ground; then the cape. Then a punch to his jaw sent him flying, and Joker, blood pouring from his nose, grinned wildly. “That’s more like it!” he said.</p><p>They fought for long, fragmented minutes, with a brutal sort of efficiency that came from knowing the moves, but there was a new passion there, something stranger and more dangerous, something that sparked its way, like static, over Joker’s skin. He didn’t know where they would go from here; what was even left for them. He’d only thrown the dice, rigged the game, but he didn’t know how it would end—how it possibly could.</p><p><em>You know I would have done this forever</em>, he thought. <em>But they weren’t going to let us. </em>A fist to Batman’s face and blood poured from his lips. Brutal punches, kicks from the knee in succession, then, almost made the Joker stagger, but he had been preparing for this; he was ready and Batman—Batman had lost his balance months ago. <em>I wasn’t going to settle for an end unworthy of the legends we’ve become</em>. <em>I </em>wouldn’t<em> settle for an insult like that</em>. <em>And I knew you’d feel the same</em>.</p><p>A kick to the edge of Joker’s shoulder; Batman’s blows were still strong but his precision was weakening; the moves slowed, easier to predict. Joker was slammed back into the wall, then he surged forward, cracking his forehead against the Bat’s. Beyond the sound of the fight, ragged breathing, heavy steps, the dust, rising and settling again, <em>that song</em> turned on: from some old radio far above; but who, at this time of morning, and in such a wretched place, would play a love song?</p><p>
  <em>“You always hurt the one you love,”</em>
</p><p>He dodged, grabbed the utility belt, still lying on the ground beside them, whirled and caught it around Batman’s neck; pulled, steadying the Bat’s weight against him, while his own legs trembled.</p><p>
  <em>“The one you shouldn't hurt at all,”</em>
</p><p>Then he fell.</p><p>Like any man might; when he had lost his air, and gone into a faint, but it still shocked Joker. The heavy suddenness; the way the Bat just slipped to the ground.</p><p>Easily.</p><p>
  <em>“You always take the sweetest rose…”</em>
</p><p>He collapsed, sitting by Batman’s downed head, blood almost obscuring the symbol across his chest.Joker’s shoulders resting on his legs, his hands pressed to his eyes, as though to blur the image of a hero vanquished and destroyed, stripped of everything.</p><p>
  <em>“And crush it till the petals fall…”</em>
</p><p>“I’ve thought about this moment for decades,” Joker confessed. The silent form didn’t respond; didn’t open his eyes, lay insensible and still. “Wondered what I’d do if I ever got to see you like this. All broken and <em>vulnerable</em>…” his voice cracked, wavered.</p><p>Faint and scratchy, the record played on, words dropping like pebbles into a polluted lake.</p><p>“Oh, God…” he said. The tears that sprang to his eyes flooded down, washing away the scene, the horrible stillness of the slowly-breathing body; his shoulders shook. “What have I done…?”</p><p>
  <em>“You always break the kindest heart <br/>
With a hasty word you can't recall… so<br/>
If I broke your heart last night,<br/>
It's because I love you most of all.”</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was raining, that afternoon, when Joker carried Batman, bridal-style, over Arkham’s threshold. Thunder drowned out the sound of voices, the cold rain slid down his skin. There was a deep wrongness about Arkham, something he’d always felt, never admitted to himself, and for a moment, letting Batman’s bleeding form into the hands of the police, he almost pulled him back.</p><p><em>It’s just a joke!</em> he wanted to explain. The police, talking crudely of wanting to see under the mask, didn’t understand. “No!” Joker yelled, hearing them; his hands still half-outstretched; they fell to his side into curled-up fists. “We agreed to keep his secret.”</p><p>“Sure we did,” the officer answered, under his cap. It was pulled down, and the shadows of Arkham’s barred doors hid his eyes. They carried him away, into the asylum.</p><p>The doors fell shut then; between him and Batman. Leaving him free in the den of mazes that was Gotham. Everyone dispersed; in the thin sun he fell to his knees, shoes sliding in the mud, in the swirl of water loosing the ground, washing its way into eddies. He laughed until he cried, brought his arms over his head, fingers digging into his skull; dark strands plastering themselves across his face. The deep <em>un-rightness</em> of it all felt like a cord breaking loose from a tightrope. When the laughter finally ended, and he sat up, he saw Nightwing standing beside him, watching.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Joker asked.</p><p>“Waiting for you to try to kill someone?” Nightwing shrugged. “I don’t know.” His gaze darted, inexorably, toward Arkham’s frowning doors. There was a worried look on his face, in his tight-lipped expression. So he felt it too.</p><p>“Was it everything you wanted it to be?” Nightwing said at last. “Destroying him, I mean.”</p><p>“Like you didn’t <em>help</em>, bird-brain?” Joker sat up, curling his feet under him, looking up at the bulky vest with its recriminatory GTO, and the dark, uncomfortable twitch in Nightwing’s face.</p><p>There was a long, awkward moment. Nightwing put his hands in his pockets. “I…” he said. “He was going too far. We all agreed.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Joker said. “And you heard what they’re calling him now. A Super-criminal. Funny, isn’t it.”</p><p>“You don’t sound like you think it’s funny,” Nightwing observed.</p><p>“Well,” Joker said, climbing unsteadily to his feet. He looked off into the tangled valley of abandoned orchards that surrounded Arkham hill, black-boughed trees with crab-apples, green and rotten, underfoot. “I have it on good authority that my best jokes only make me unhappy.”</p><p>He shivered. “I want a shirt,” he said.</p><p>Nightwing’s face broke into a reluctant smile, and he laughed, shortly and a little wildly. “What the heck is up with that, anyway? Did you take off your shirt to fight him?”</p><p>Joker shrugged. “No-ooooo…” he looked over at Nightwing. “Okay, yes. But now I want my shirt back.”</p><p>“Where is it?”</p><p>He shook his head. In the alley where they’d fought, where he’d left it by accident; but he was afraid to go back. He had to focus, concentrate for the next part of his plan, for when Neo Joker would make her move. And then: then he would rescue Batman, team up with him to fight the bigger threat; “Jack” would heroically sacrifice himself and turn back into Joker, and then… he didn’t know. Would it have changed anything, in the end? The whole, corrupted system? Or were they still going round the same wheel they’d always been on?</p><p>He nodded goodbye to Nightwing; got into his car and drove back to the apartment he shared with Harleen. There was a light on, under the door; she must be home. He was distracted; pushed the door open without looking, and was surprised too late to notice things ajar; it thudded shut behind him.</p><p>“Oh,” he said.</p><p>“Hello, my dear,” Neo Joker said. She was sitting on the spinny stool at their kitchen bar (Harleen had been adamant their new apartment, bigger and better than their old one, still had a kitchen bar) and spinning; round and round. She stopped and waved to him.</p><p>“Harley?” Joker said. He pushed his hair back; it had dried but lost all its product and gone back to its usual state of unruly curls. “Is there something you needed? When’s the freeze-ray going to go off?”</p><p>Neo Joker smiled brightly. “Never,” she said simply.</p><p>“…what,” Joker said.</p><p>Neo Joker had taken one of their glasses and filled it with wine, now she took a sip and put the glass down on the counter so hard it cracked. “I said <em>never</em>. Do you want to know why?”</p><p>Joker shook his head.</p><p>“Because of the ring.” Neo Joker took a deep breath, her eyes suddenly far away. “I could’ve stood anything but that, you know. The engagement ring. You didn’t even think to take it off before we fought, did you? <em>Harleen Quinzel</em>. You’ve always been in love with her, and I should have known… she’d pull you into sanity just as you once pulled her into insanity.”</p><p>Joker stepped forward cautiously, realizing at once that this was a delicate situation. He held out his hands placatingly. “Now Harley, you know that’s not true…”</p><p>Neo Joker’s eyes found the ring, still on his hand, and he curled his fingers under. A guilty move: he realized only too late how he betrayed himself, and Neo Joker huffed a disappointed laugh. “You’ve lost your touch,” she said. “This—what’s it all <em>for</em>? Do you even <em>remember</em>? Why you started this? Who you used to be?”</p><p>Joker opened his mouth, and closed it, several times, but no words came out. Neo Joker slipped off the barstool and pulled on her lavender overcoat. “I’ve seen the joke,” she explained. She walked past him, turned at the door, and gave him a slight smile. “Never give ‘em what they expect, remember? You wanted a normal city, Jack. So live in it.” She took her hat from the hook, put it on; and then she left: the Joker, laughing bright and cheerful; the door swinging wide open after her.</p><p>From behind the counter, music began to play. He peered back to see a box, with its handle slowly turning, and stepped back, afraid for a moment that it would burst, with who knows what deadly gag inside. But the Jack-in-the-box didn’t open. The song never came to <em>pop</em>! at all, but merely kept playing, inexorably, round, and round, and round.</p><hr/><p>When Harleen came in, It was dark. Jack was lying on the couch, in the hazy orange glow of neon from outside the pulled-down blinds, drinking the rest of the wine. The Jack-in-the-box was still playing.</p><p>“Ugh,” Harleen said. “What’s that awful music?”</p><p>Jack pointed wordlessly, and when Harleen came out of the kitchen, her face was pale, splotches of frantic color in her cheeks. “Jack,” she said tightly. “Did… did Joker put that there?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jack said, scowling. “She broke your glass, too. Not me.”</p><p>“Wait—” Harleen said. “What are you talking about?” she came close, her eyes raking their disapproving way over his untidy clothes. “She?”</p><p>“Neo Joker claimed the title,” he explained. “I couldn’t do anything about it.” He laughed, incredulously. “Me, <em>I</em> couldn’t do anything about it!” He sat up, waving his glass wildly; some of the wine spilled across Harleen’s face, a splash of red, and she stepped back, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “Because she was <em>right</em>.” He laughed, frantically, and Harleen stumbled to the nearest lamp, turning it on. She gasped when she saw him.</p><p>“You’ve stopped taking the pills,” she said.</p><p>Jack looked down at himself; at the chalk-white skin he’d grown so used to over the years. “Oh, yes. I suppose. They would have stopped working soon anyway. But it doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“What do you <em>mean</em> it doesn’t matter?” Harleen said, backing up toward the wall.</p><p>“Because,” Jack tried to explain. He sighed. “Look, would it make you feel better if I took them?” He swallowed a handful, dry, and coughed up blood, watching as his skin faded darker than bone. Only then did Harleen come over, gingerly, sitting on the coffee table across from him.</p><p>“Jack, I’m worried about you,” she said.</p><p>“Are you, Harley?” he asked tiredly. He sighed, letting his head flop back against the cushions. “Look. We both know it ended for us a long time ago. But you succeeded: you cured me. Congratulations!” He lifted his glass in a half-hearted cheer her way. “You don’t have to pretend anymore.”</p><p>“What do you mean, pretend?” Harleen said. “Jack, it’s not <em>over</em> between us—”</p><p>“You’ve <em>written</em> your book already!” Jack yelled suddenly, sitting up. He threw the glass on the ground. “I’ve seen you do it; I’ve seen the publisher’s contract; the tell-all you always wanted.”</p><p>“I was never going to publish it,” Harleen said. Then continued, accusingly, “why did you look in my drawer?”</p><p>“Why did you hide it, if you weren’t going to publish it?”</p><p>Harleen hesitated.</p><p>“I’ve known for months,” Jack said. “But I’m not telling you to blame you. I just want you to know that I…” he pulled off his engagement ring and let it fall into her hand. It bounced, before she could catch it: and they watched it roll into the shadow under the couch.</p><p>Jack looked away, and swallowed. “I don’t blame you. I know it was as much my fault as yours it never worked out. I just wanted to tell you it’s over.”</p><p>“It’s <em>not</em> over!” Harleen shouted.</p><p>“Yes,” Jack said. “Harleen… Quinzel. It is. I’m sorry. I have to say no to someone.”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Harleen tugged at his sleeve as he walked toward the door. “Jack, what do you mean, no?”</p><p>“I mean,” Jack said, turning to her for one moment, “you asked me to marry you once. And I was too cowardly to tell you the truth of what I felt then. I’m telling you now: <em>no</em>.”</p><p>He leaned down to lace up his shoes.</p><p>“You can’t just <em>leave</em>!” Harleen said.</p><p>“Why not?” Jack said.</p><p>“I’ll—I’ll reveal the corruption <em>you’ve</em> been involved with! The underhand dealings, the destroyed library—”</p><p>“And let everyone know you’re an accomplice?” Jack asked. Harleen fell silent.</p><p>“Just let it go,” he said. “You have your story, your triumph: I have nothing. At least do me the grace of leaving me my dignity.”</p><p>He walked out the door, and didn’t look back.</p><hr/><p>Jack was driving aimlessly around the city when the call from Nightwing came.</p><p>“What?” he said snappishly, picking up.</p><p>There was a long silence on the other end; a few unsteady breaths. Then: “they took off the mask.”</p><p>Jack threw the phone down, turned the wheel and was racing back to Arkham before he even thought; but on the long winding road up the hill, he stopped, letting the engine idle. He leaned down, groping for the phone before putting it to his ear. “Are you still there?” he said.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Jack took a heaving breath and let it out; he pressed his arm against the dashboard and closed his eyes. “But the deal was the mask stays on,” he said, sounding naïve and confused even to his own ears. He should have <em>known</em>, the way the policemen reacted. He hadn’t been thinking. How could they understand what it meant, what Batman had always meant to the city?</p><p>“They know who he is,” Nightwing said.</p><p>“Which means they know who you are,” Jack said grimly. “Are you safe?”</p><p>“For the moment, I think.” There was silence for a moment. “Wait,” Nightwing said, confused. “How did you know… do you <em>know</em> who we are?”</p><p>“Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon. I put it together a long time ago.”</p><p>“But…” Nightwing’s voice was high and incredulous. “But <em>how</em>?”</p><p>“Just luck,” Jack said. He rolled down the window, curled up in the seat, sideways, letting his head rest on the open edge, looking into the trees above. It had stopped raining. “I came back to Arkham to rescue him. But I’m too late, aren’t I,” he said. He sighed. “I really screwed up, Nightwing. It was just supposed to be a little jaunt through the looking glass, you know? I just wanted a <em>chance</em>… for things to be different, for once. I didn’t want to hurt him.”</p><p>“You never do,” Nightwing said forbiddingly. But he didn’t hang up.</p><p>“I lied,” Jack said. “I never killed the first Robin.”</p><p>He chuckled at the shocked gasp from the other end of the line. “I kidnapped him, yes. But I didn’t kill him. Told him to disappear, gave him money and walked him out the door.”</p><p>“Jason wouldn’t have done that,” Nightwing said. “He was Robin. He wouldn’t just give that up.”</p><p>“You did,” Jack said.</p><p>“…that’s different,” Nightwing whispered; it was a broken sound. “Jack, I don’t know what to do,” he confessed at last.</p><p>“How should I know?” Jack said bitterly. “I’m in no better position than you are. We made our beds, ergo.”</p><p>“We can’t just <em>let this happen</em>!” Nightwing said.</p><p>“It already <em>has</em>,” Jack volleyed back. “We stood by and did nothing when we had the chance. No…” he trailed off. “No, worse. I <em>orchestrated</em> it. There’s nothing left…” he took a deep breath, wiping the traitorous tears running from his eyes. “There’s nothing <em>left</em>.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He didn’t have it in him to disappear. Watched with the fervid bafflement of the rest of Gotham the way the whole artifice was stripped away, as though it was so easy to destroy a myth. The footage, sad and stark, that some unprincipled Arkham staff smuggled out seemed ludicrous, because it didn’t even answer the question. Bruce Wayne, the cream of Gotham, floating in the cesspool of the madhouse like suds left from bones boiling away.</p><p>It wasn’t that bad. The creature’s eyes were far away; they didn’t seem to recognize the possibility of intrusion. Stuck on higher thoughts, an unseeing god.</p><p>There were unfamiliar lines around the corner of his eyes, down his face. They might have been only static.</p><p>He’s mayor. He’s—he’s <em>been</em> the Joker; none of them would dare bar him access from visiting his Bat, if he demanded it. But going in like that, both of them stripped of their faces, might be enough to shatter everything. Send the whole city up in a blaze without meaning to, lacking the stability of dynamite.</p><p>In the visiting room, pale like old bleach, Bruce Wayne sat behind glass, the prison-like partitions too-familiar from years of Joker’s exploits, coded messages, layer upon layer of meaning built upon a space. It was disorienting, being on the other side. For a moment, he forgot why he came here. <em>What did you do, that they wouldn’t let you out in the visiting lounge, with the low-security rabble? </em></p><p>Any word Joan Kerr might speak was passed through an artificial respirator of metal, a faceplate locked in, caked with grime and scratched, tinny amplification. He wanted to be able to reach out, touch the hand chained there. Was relieved, somehow, that the possibility was—heh—off the table.</p><p>For a moment, those eyes focused on him. He braced for impact, but all that landed was the name. “Joker.” Spoken so flatly it was hard to tell what the Bat thought, or if he was merely recognizing the figure on the other side, though it was dressed in a pink blouse; stylishly curled wig, a mask of skin-toned powder over all exposed flesh.</p><p>He laughed lightly. A reflex he couldn’t break, but it had never sounded so fake; he cut it off before he could truly cackle and draw unwanted attention. He felt like the visiting lover in a noir film. Doomed and drawn in by her man behind the bars. “It’s an easy mistake to make, I know, but I’m <em>Joan Kerr</em>,” he said, with exaggerated care. “Just here on a mission of charity. For someone who’s done so much for Gotham City over the years, it’s the least you deserve…” he trailed off then, uncomfortable, and fiddled with the tiny buttons along the edges of his silk gloves. “Like I said,” he continued, rallying. “I’m with the Women’s Storytelling Society.”</p><p>Bruce made no answer, but his eyes slipped away, unfocused. He was losing the Bat’s attention. No—he was being… <em>dismissed</em>.</p><p>“I’ve written a story about Batman,” he said, pushing on, because he never knew when to stop.</p><p>That was okay. Neither did the Bat.</p><p>He cleared his throat and read: the fateful story of the Caped Crusader’s end. There was a wake, of course. Everyone was invited. The Cat took the first moment to speak, to explain why and how the legend had died.</p><p>When he finished, he waited. Words lingering on his final line.</p><p>“…You came here because you love <em>me</em>. I <em>let</em> you die because <em>I</em> love you. It was <em>always</em> too late.” He didn’t have to ask if Batman got the joke.</p><p>“Rather morbid for the Women’s Storytelling Society, Miss Kerr,” Wayne said at last. He sounded tired.</p><p>There was silence, for a moment. Pure silence, between them; those infinitesimal noises of bodies, breathing and shifting, cut off by the glass.</p><p>“She hasn’t been around for years,” the Bat continued, with something that sounded—fond. Too fond, a kind of soft nostalgia. He pushed aside his jealousy at the thought. That was—inconsequential.</p><p>“It’s not about her,” he bit out. Too quickly.</p><p>“What <em>is</em> it about?”</p><p>“Don’t you know?”</p><p>Batman huffed, that sound as familiar as ever, despite the way the partition wicked it away. He could recognize it in that particular shape of his mouth. “It’s not hard to guess,” he allowed.</p><p><em>—“</em>Stop<em> this! You can’t keep administering your own brand of justice.”<br/>
—“And </em>you<em> can? I’m doing a better job of cleaning up this city than </em>you<em> ever did!”<br/>
—“Not like </em>this<em>, Selina. This is </em>wrong<em>.”<br/>
—“Because </em>I’m<em> one of the bad guys? I guess the fact that I </em>care<em> for you isn’t worth a hill of beans in </em>your<em> world, is it?”</em></p><p>He looked down at the clean, typed papers in front on him to hide the bitterness in his expression. “So why didn’t you change the game when you had the chance?”</p><p>He can feel the Bat’s eyes grow stony, even looking down. Pinning him better than handcuffs ever could.</p><p>“Has that ever been an option with you?” the Bat asked, implacable.</p><p>He opened his mouth. Closed it again.</p><p>“We never had that conversation. You never gave me anything to reject. You’re retroactively rewriting history to suit your fantasies of heroism—Joan.”</p><p>He half-rose in his chair, considering for a wild moment snatching the canister hidden in his purse in a tube of lipstick, throwing it forward and watching the resulting explosion, the building crumbling from it’s foundations. “Don’t,” he spat. He kept his words to a furious whisper, kept himself from leaping at the glass with only the skin of his red-painted fingernails, digging into his palms. “Don’t pretend there was ever any option.”</p><p>“There’s always an option, Joker,” Batman said.</p><p>He pressed his lips together into a scowl. “There’s no Joker here,” he said. He breathed in and out, harshly. “That’s the <em>point</em>.”</p><p>The Bat didn’t answer.</p><p>“I’ll see you again,” he said at last. He picked up his papers and left without looking back.</p>
<hr/><p>“That’s ridiculous. Do you know how much of that story is <em>impossible</em>?” Wayne drawled, his sarcasm biting.</p><p>Joan shrugged. “Well,” he said, “one must admit everyone’s imaginations were titillated, finding out the true identity of the Bat. And, if a figure of such mystery could be a public personage, how far-fetched <em>is</em> it really, that his greatest enemy was also…”</p><p>“Alfred Pennyworth?” Bruce closed his eyes as if pained, for a moment. He swiped one hand across his brow. “Look. I <em>know</em> where you’re going with all this, and I—”</p><p>“Why haven’t you escaped?” Joan interrupted, quickly. He didn’t think he was imagining the spark of confusion flitting across those blue-marble eyes.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Why haven’t you escaped? You’re <em>Batman</em>, you know Arkham inside and out. You’ve made your living on studying it.”</p><p>“There’s no space left for Batman,” Wayne said heavily. “Not now.”</p><p>“Interpret the damn story, will you!” Joan said, slamming his fist against the table.</p><p>They went quiet, for a moment, until the roving eyes of the guards finally went back to their ordinary arcs.</p><p>Bruce sighed, leaning back and tenting his fingers. The cuffs around his wrists clanked together as he moved. “The Joker always wanted to help me,” he started, with heavy irony. “He… took things too far. Bruce Wayne finally got the joke, was revealed as the furthest thing from a hero. But… you don’t believe Batman would ever lie down and die. You want to end peacefully, but the only way this can ever end is with one of us bleeding to death on the ground.”</p><p>“Even if there never <em>was</em> a Batman,” Joan said, “I’m <em>still</em> Batman.”</p><p>“So… what,” Bruce said. He spread his hands, calling subtle attention to the chains. “This is all some sort of pep talk? You want me to pick the cowl back up, even after you’ve torn me down? <em>You were right about one thing, Joker.</em> You knew me enough to destroy me. And you did. Whether or not you meant to. Perhaps you’ll just have to learn to live with it.”</p><p>“That’s not… that’s not the <em>point</em>,” Joan said.</p><p>“Then enlighten me.”</p><p>“If you have to explain a joke, it’s <em>no longer funny!</em>” Joan said.</p><p>Bruce smiled. “I know.”</p>
<hr/><p><em>—“Smile, damn you, why don’t you smile?!” …<br/>
—and after much too long, he went down.<br/>
—he </em>died<em>.<br/>
—but he </em>still<em> didn’t smile.<br/>
—and he was </em>right<em>. It </em>wasn’t<em> funny. But it </em>should<em> have been…</em></p>
<hr/><p>“What do you talk about, when you visit him?” Dick asked, in that harsh-lit fluorescence, pale Gotham imitation of the original Batcave, lost in the ventricles of the city. Jack, riffling through the wardrobe room for Joan’s next disguise as though looking for inspiration, paused. Turned to watch the former vigilante, standing with crossed arms that turned to a sigh, one hand playing with his hair as the young man looked away from his empty stare.</p><p>“Stories,” Jack said. “Where we came from. Why. I wrote them all…” his hand pointed, awkwardly, to the mass of typed papers on the bench, and Dick went over, frowning at the words he saw.</p><p>“Why?” he asked. “Surely you have other things to say, surely…”</p><p>“Why haven’t <em>you</em> visited him?” Jack countered.</p><p>“Like they’d let me in,” Dick said, with the slightest huff of a deprecating laugh.</p><p>“…in disguise?” Jack finished.</p><p>Dick stared at the sunset-peach silk skirt, as Jack considered it as part of the ensemble, frowning, arms outstretched in front of him, holding the fragile fabric. A soft, wistful smile flew across Nightwing’s face, but he shook his head.</p><p>“He wouldn’t appreciate it. Or,” Dick amended, “maybe I wouldn’t. We’d… probably just argue.”</p><p>“And you think we <em>don’t</em>?” Jack scoffed, tossing the item behind him into his pile of discarded options.</p><p>“I think,” Dick said slowly, “that you’re playing a game, and for some reason Bruce is… not unopposed to it.” He shrugged, a conflicted look on his face. “Me and him… it wouldn’t be <em>different</em> enough for us. To cut the sting. That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?”</p>
<hr/><p>—<em>he was a kind, good, brilliant man… not a </em>funny<em> guy, though; </em>[…Robin said.]<em> He let </em>me<em> do the jokes. But everything else. He was… </em>everything else<em>… And he did the impossible.</em></p><p>“Is this an apology?” Bruce asked.</p><p>Joan stumbled over the printed words, not able to look up.</p><p>“Is that what this is all about?” he said. “Or are you just that desperate to make sense of your own life. J— what am I to you, under all this… heroism? What am I now?”</p>
<hr/><p>“All these stories,” Dick said, sitting one leg across the arm of the Bat-Chair in front of the Bat-Computer, and swiveling around idly— “you’re casting yourself as, well—everyone in his life. Everyone except yourself. What’s the <em>truth</em>?”</p><p>“Of what?” Jack asked, palette of colors strewn open as he carefully painted his skin the same sepia as everyone else in the sordid city.</p><p>Dick waved a hand, as though uncertain—as though Jack should just <em>know</em>. “I don’t know,” he said. “All of it. Where you came from. Why <em>did</em> you turn out like this?”</p><p>“You’re not a psychiatrist, Dickie-bird,” Jack said. “Don’t try to be.”</p><p>“I’m not,” Dick returned, with a clear look. “<em>You’re</em> the one who’s telling stories.”</p><p>“It’s a tragic tale,” Jack warned. “Not fit for an innocent’s ears.”</p><p>Dick rolled his eyes. “Come off it.”</p><p>“Well,” Jack said, “when I was very young I was kidnapped by a comprachio who gave me a Chelsea grin…”</p><p>“<em>The Man Who Laughs</em>,” Dick interrupted. “Conrad Veidt. I know.”</p><p>“Then why ask?”</p><p>“Because that’s not <em>you</em>.”</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Jack shrugged. “Perhaps it’s you instead? Sometimes I mix these things up. ‘<em>They could touch up a little being with such skill that its father could not have recognized it. Sometimes they left the spine straight and remade the face,</em>’” he motioned to himself, eyes following their own path in the mirror; then he spun and gestured grandly to Dick, who had put the papers down and was now watching him with a brow furrowed in confusion, long legs expertly twisted up beneath him so that his feet didn’t even touch the ground.</p><p>“<em>‘Children destined for tumblers had their joints dislocated in a masterly manner; thus gymnasts were made. Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child; they also took away his memory. At least, they took away all they could of it; the child had no consciousness of the mutilation to which he had been subjected.’</em>”</p><p>“You’re not still going on about Batman, are you,” Dick said suspiciously.</p><p>“Moi?” Jack widened his eyes in surprise. “<em>You’re</em> the one that brought him up, Nightwing. Does the shoe fit?”</p><p>Dick let out a ragged sigh and looked away. “Batman wasn’t—he didn’t—”</p><p>“Changed your mind?” Jack asked. “The Great Dark Knight <em>isn’t</em> not fit to be trusted? Too dangerous? Too volatile? Too… insane?”</p><p>“I never said he was perfect,” Dick shot back, bitterly. “But… he <em>tried</em>?” He swallowed, and pulled back in the chair. “He didn’t… <em>mutilate</em> me for the fun of it. Anyway,” Dick’s voice rose a little, “what about <em>you</em>? You’re the one who started the whole thing. You’ve said everything I have about Batman and worse, and now that he’s finally <em>lost</em> you want to make it up to him. But he’s <em>never</em> going to forgive you.”</p><p>Jack shrugged, fingers stilling on a brush dipped in powder.</p><p>“I have to try, don’t I?” he said quietly, uneasily.</p><p><em>Surely there was space left in the story to try a second time? In the novel, the lovers may have died, but bring Hollywood into it and the genre </em>requires<em> a happy ending.</em></p><p>Behind him, Dick let out a breath. “…Tell me if it works,” he said. And walked away.</p>
<hr/><p>—<em>“We turned his city against him. We waited for him to despair. It didn’t </em>happen<em>.”</em></p><p>“What now, Scheherazade?” Bruce asked.</p><p>He laughed, clutching at himself, feet kicking out like a child’s in irrepressible humor; covering his mouth with a gloved hand until he could stop the outburst, not even sure why he cared, why it mattered that he not be carried out in a stretcher by bystanders fearing Joker toxin. Perhaps they would only realize the truth once they had gotten poor Joan into an ambulance, trying to check her vitals, and all she’d be able to say would be, <em>Scheherazade, Scheherazade</em>.</p><p>“You think this is funny,” he said at last, gasping, wiping his eyes, “I’ve got a million of ‘em.”</p>
<hr/><p>“So you never knew his real identity?”</p><p>Nightwing, vigilante, erstwhile member of the GTO, shook his head. “Never had a clue. I mean, he was… he was <em>Batman</em>, you know. You didn’t ask him about his personal life.”</p><p>“But surely…” the reporters continued, cameras focusing in on the young man beside him, “surely you knew, Dick Grayson? It may be possible to hide such secrets from a <em>coworker</em>, but from family—?”</p><p>Grayson winced. Jack wondered, vaguely, if he’d meant to do that, because the moment after he looked serious and focused again. If these reporters, lapping up the story of their career knew them as anything other than paparazzi photos and sound-bites, they’d probably have wondered at the look in Grayson’s eyes, wonder what it meant. Infinitesimal, it slipped away before it could be categorized as anything at all.</p><p>“He was Bruce Wayne,” Grayson said, in that irritatingly charming way. <em>Quite practiced</em>. “He was my—he took me in, after my parents died. Even if I knew, I… we never talked about it. I certainly wasn’t going to <em>argue</em> about it.” He looked over, at Nightwing sitting beside him, and something about his gaze turned beseeching. “Perhaps you think that makes me a coward. Compared to you. Knowing how it all turned out…”</p><p>“…No,” Nightwing said at last.</p><p>Jack didn’t think the children noticed, but they were staring at each other with a bewildering intensity that even the reporters felt, for a moment, and he swallowed down a silent chuckle, wondering how many people were going to spin conspiracy theories of desperate love from that single look.</p><p>“There wasn’t a right thing to do,” Nightwing continued. He tore his gaze away, looked at the cameras again. “There wasn’t a single, better path—we all tried. We all did the only things we could, and… have to come to terms with that now. Even me.”</p><p>Finally, when all the cameras were gone and they were alone, Grayson let out a sick, shaking breath. “I didn’t think they were going to believe that,” he said.</p><p>“They’ll believe it,” Nightwing said.</p><p>Grayson reached up to his face, tore off the hyper-realistic face mask and wig to reveal Barbara Gordon, beads of sweat dripping down her skin, red hair in its ponytail plastered to her cheeks. “I thought I was going to collapse for a minute,” she said, with a shaky smile. “Right there in front of everyone.” She looked, shyly, in Nightwing’s direction, and then away. “Did you… mean it. What you said.”</p><p>“Yes,” Nightwing said. He reached out to her opened hand; took it, matched her smile. “Yeah. I do.”</p><p>Jack, standing in the open doorway between the study and the vast and cavernous hall of Wayne Manor, thought there was nothing else he needed to do here. He closed it quietly behind him, and left them their secrets.</p>
<hr/><p>—<em>the end of the story of Batman is, he’s dead. …what </em>else<em> am I going to do?</em></p><p>“Do you remember,” Joan asked. “When we were in Paris?”</p><p>The replica of Arkham he built was as perfect as you could get with only one set of cards and a small compartment of table, not even the span of his arms.</p><p>Those eyes traced him as though bemused; the movement of his fingers upon the structure, the delicacy with which he placed each new room and turret, the curve of his shoulder, his throat. He wasn’t sure whether Bruce was trying to memorize the shape, or forget it, like if he went over it enough it would leave his head, a song he’d finally found the end of.</p><p>“Not much,” he said. Wayne’s eyes traveled down to the scar that traced its way across his palm, and he stared, as though waiting for revelation. Then shook his head slowly. “It’s only images. Lost to the fever.”</p><p>“I remember it all.”</p><p>“What is there to remember?”</p><p>He laughed, and blinked the tears back from his eyes. Still, his hands were steady on another layer, the way they’d always been. “You told me you’d thought about retiring. Thought about spending the rest of your days in Paris. After it was all over.”</p><p>“And you’d chose when?”</p><p>“I’d choose… the possibility. I’d choose Batman and Joker going out together, in flames, because it <em>was</em> their choice. It was the only way to have it all. We died, but there’s something left… isn’t there?”</p><p>“No,” Bruce said.</p><p>He flinched, and the movement jostled it right at the top; he watched the cards pulled down by gravity—numbers, like time moving backward; grinning faces fading into the nightmare from whence they came.</p><p>Bruce looked away, sighed and ghosted one hand across the glass; not quite touching. He let it fall.</p><p>“But. Perhaps… we can start again.”</p>
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